The Fall

Genesis 3, 1 through 13.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

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

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And 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 of which I commanded you not to eat?

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

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

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

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here.

And uh we uh uh this is this is our second to last week meeting in uh this building in Centennial Elementary.

Um that's something if you've been coming here for a while, I I say things like that uh occasionally.

Uh every couple of months I say we're moving.

Um so uh we are uh uh moving uh starting on March 8th, that will be our first service, and we're moving into the Berkeley Park Chapel, which is on this same block, and it's just on the southwest corner of this very block.

So your commute will not change very much.

Um and we're going to be starting in there.

So that means here's a picture of the building.

Look at these lovely images.

Uh very cool.

Uh yeah, pretty uh this is like extremely exciting.

So uh this uh we announced this officially last week, and it was in our elder letter if you're uh signed up for our newsletter uh this this past week as well.

And uh this is going to be uh basically our our as close to permanent as we can get home in the Berkeley neighborhood.

So our hope uh with moving into Berkeley was that we would be able to really serve this community for a long time.

And this building is really an answer to prayer uh in that regard.

It's a place for us to move into and really for the long haul to commit to this community.

So next week, after the service, uh, makers and breakers and anyone else who would like to help, we're going to be taking all that makes the pop-up church happen.

And at the end of the service, we're going to be moving it into that building.

So instead of reloading the shipping container that we store everything in out in on the playground, uh, we're going to load everything into the new chapel.

So who's with me?

Yeah, cool.

Great.

All right.

The seven of us will go over there and we'll uh be able to load everything in.

So uh yeah, so that's uh uh the announcement for next week.

Plan on moving, and uh there's there's a lot more things to come.

Uh a lot of very exciting things.

Also, if uh uh we will we will also be doing a baby dedication.

That'll be one of the first things that we do in the new building.

Our second week there, which will be March 15th, uh beware.

Uh we beware the Ides of March.

All right.

That's my last Shakespeare reference this morning.

The uh we'll be uh uh doing a baby dedication.

So if you have a baby that uh you would like to dedicate in this church, that basically is a commitment that we make as a community to our children so that uh to bring them up in the ways of the Lord.

And we commit that as a family, and then as a church, we commit back to the child and their parents that uh we want to be supportive of the incredible task that it is to raise children and to raise them up in the ways of the Lord.

So that's uh we do that in baby dedication.

If you would like to sign up for that, you can go to uh the calendar on our website or in our app.

You'll be able to tap the baby dedication and sign up there.

Uh one thing I haven't said in a while, at Redemption Church Denver, we gather in two ways.

We gather and we gather.

Great.

And so that means we gather large on Sunday mornings together and we gather small throughout the weeks in each other's homes.

Uh so a great way to get connected here at Redemption Church is by joining one of those small groups that meets in our homes.

We call those redemption groups.

And uh basically it's a very casual environment.

We usually share a meal, share our lives together, pray for one another, and uh go through that week's sermon text.

Um, our group we meet every other week in our house.

Uh most groups, I believe, meet every other week.

Uh so if you would like to sign up for one of those, uh once again, just go to uh the website and tap connect.

You'll be able to sign up for one of those.

All right, we are moving through Genesis.

Um, so let's pray together before we get into today's text.

Holy Father, we pray that you would show us the truth of our situation in your word this morning.

That as we move through Genesis 3, we might come into uh get a clear picture of the reality that we live in that is uh plagued by sin, and that we might see the hope that you offer to us in the midst of that situation.

Father, we pray that you would show that to us in your word this morning.

Lift us up in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so we are moving through the book of Genesis, and uh we've been doing this since about January 12th when we started, and now we have made it to chapter three.

So up until now we've seen the glorious unfolding of creation, where God made the heavens and the earth, and he fills the earth with his creatures, and then he makes humanity, and he creates Adam and Eve and brings them together in this glorious marriage, and he commissions them to be fruitful, multiply, go through the earth, continue this pattern of creative goodness that I have started.

And last week we saw that the climax of this creative story was Adam and Eve standing together naked and unashamed.

It means they had nothing to hide from one another, and they were in complete enjoyment of each other's presence.

They stood totally exposed before each other and before the Lord, and they carried with them no shame.

It is the heights of glory that we've seen in Scripture so far.

And uh today, about halfway through the chapter that we're moving through today, Genesis 3, we're going to see that both Adam and Eve are hiding from each other and from God in the midst of their shame.

From now on, the story that we're moving through is one where the world and ourselves are corrupted by the sin that enters the world in today's story.

So another way of saying that is from now on, the text will become much more relatable.

From now on, the story is not just of a glorious creation or of an amazing, wonderful land full of all the delights that you could imagine, but uh is one that's plagued by sin, people that are full of shame and uh have a tendency towards hiding from one another rather than towards deep community, and marriages that are that are difficult and painful rather than uh full of just a naked sort of ease.

And today we see sin enter the world.

So, what we're going to look at is the rebellion itself, the rebellion of Adam and Eve.

What is the shape of that?

In understanding the shape of their rebellion, we'll be able to understand what do we mean when we use the word sin.

We don't mean something very generic, we mean something pretty particular, and we're gonna see the shape of that.

And then we're going to see the curse that comes into the world, that comes into all of creation because of the sin of Adam and Eve.

We're going to see how that curse affects us even now.

And then we're going to see in the midst of this terrible darkness, we're going to see this little shaft of light that comes through, even in this chapter, even in the chapter that is called the fall.

We're going to see this glorious hope of our redemption already at work.

So let's get started.

The rebellion, Genesis 3, verse 1.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

This is the beginning of the temptation.

We see that the temptation that Adam and Eve succumbed to is from a real tempter.

And the serpent, I think now in our minds, we just automatically make this switch.

Like, okay, the serpent is Satan.

But that view doesn't develop until further on in Scripture.

And it does develop to where Satan is identified with this serpent.

The serpent at this point is just a crafty animal.

In fact, the most shrewd of God's animals that lives on the earth.

And this tempter doesn't pose a direct attack.

Look at the subtlety that he uses to corrupt Eve.

He directs his question to her and he says, Did God really say, did he actually say that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

It's this perfect extreme.

He hints at this idea that God is not a God who provides, but God is a God who withholds and restricts.

What is the truth of what God offered in the garden?

It is not that they couldn't eat from any tree.

It's that they could only not eat from one.

The garden, as we saw, the garden is this, it's a garden of yeses.

It's overflowing with opportunity and with this glorious provision that God provides.

And yet there's this one restriction.

And Satan comes in and he says, this one restriction, he expands it to be a total restriction.

Here's the implication God is withholding from you something that is good.

And that means that God is not really for your good.

This is the subtle implication of Satan's question.

And in Genesis 3, 2 through 3, Eve responds.

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

Now it's interesting here is that Eve already begins to take the pattern that the serpent's question implied.

What she does is she minimizes the provision of God, immediately starts to contract the provision of God, and she expands the restrictiveness of God.

What's given to Adam, what Adam is told by God is, surely you may eat of every tree that is in the garden.

They're all yours, except for one.

She minimizes that and she just counters what the serpent said.

We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

She doesn't capture this exact language of every tree is given to us.

And then for the restriction from the one tree, she goes one step further and restricts it beyond what God had actually restricted.

They were prohibited from eating from the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But Eve says, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it.

Eve is starting by this implication from the serpent to buy into this caricature of God, which says she gets him just out of proportion.

He's primarily restrictive.

The main thing that we see in God is his restrictiveness, not his provision, not his gracious overflowing of the gift that they had been given in creation.

So the woman contracts the provision and expands the prohibition.

So the serpent then turns and he meets this counter from Eve with an outright lie.

Genesis 3, 4 through 5, it says, But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.

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

This is the direct lie that Eve receives from Satan.

And here's the position that Eve now finds herself in from this lie.

Now she has an option.

Is God telling the truth or is the serpent telling the truth?

The truth will reside in whatever decision that she makes.

And the lie has this very particular type of shape where all of a sudden she wonders, so this this if I eat the fruit of this tree, then my eyes will be opened.

Does that mean my eyes are closed?

Is there more that God is withholding from me by prohibiting me from going beyond this command?

Are these limits that are placed on me that I thought were here for my good?

Are these limits actually my captivity and my slavery?

And then it said that if I the serpent said that if I eat from the tree, then I will be like God.

Does that mean that this image of God that I thought was implicit in me, that I thought God gave to me and was built into just who I am, does that mean that it's really not there?

That in order for me to be like God, I need to go beyond what God is saying for me to be.

And in fact, does this mean that God, rather than my provider and my caretaker, does this mean that he is actually my rival?

That's the position that Eve finds herself in under this lie.

That's the implications of the lie.

That God is not our provider, he's not our caretaker, he's not the one who overflows in this abundant grace towards us.

But by the fact of his one restriction, God is our master who enslaves us, the one who prevents our freedom, the one who must be overcome and transcended in order for us to be able to experience our true humanity.

That's the lie.

And all of a sudden, evil is presented as something that goes beyond good rather than as something that is a retraction from the good.

And that's often the way that we can we feel and experience our temptations.

That if I don't get this, then I'm not going to be able to go beyond this normal experience of God that I have.

And it's in going beyond that I find my real freedom.

Evil, in truth, is a retraction.

Now, there's this interesting parallel, I think, between the way that Eve has this interaction with the serpent and what the serpent's lie is, and the way that we often have this conversation around God's sovereignty or God's total control of all things.

Now, often we enter the conversation of God being sovereign over all, that there's nothing in his creation that doesn't happen outside of his providence, that uh he is uh, that all things are from him, through him, and to him.

It's all in his control.

A lot of times when we enter that conversation, we enter it in this way that approaches God as a threat.

Look, if God is the one who's really in control, then that means all of my freedom has just been fake.

It's just been a fiction.

That my true humanity is actually threatened by God being the one who really is God.

And that's the way that we often engage in that conversation.

And so what we're doing is we're trying to kind of carve out space for our own freedom because we think that God's total control over all things is a threat to us.

That it's a rivalry.

Look, either he's in control or I'm in control.

It can't be both.

Either he will be God or I will be God.

It can't be both.

And the answer is: look, that's true.

What he should have said to the serpent is like, look, I see what you're doing.

It's either God is in control or I'm in control.

And look, serpent, that's true.

If if God was like you, if God was just a part of this creation, like me, if God just inhabited it as one of his own creatures, like we do, then yeah, if you took up all the space of control in this creation, then you're right.

There'd be none left over for me.

Because this is a finite world we live in.

But God isn't like us.

This God, the blessed Trinity, he's not like you and me.

He's not a creature like us who lives in this finite world that we live in.

He's not trading off points for freedom in order to maintain his own control.

The only freedom that exists comes from him.

The only control that is that exists in the world is on loan from him.

He is other than us.

His freedom is no threat to ours.

He's a very different type of being than we are.

Sure, your total control, serpent, would be a threat to my total control.

But not the blessed Trinity.

The blessed Trinity could limit everything in creation and still make me totally free.

And yet he doesn't.

This is what Eve should have said.

I'm working on the script.

So the lie to Eve, unfortunately, she doesn't say that.

But the lie takes root.

And so Eve finds herself in this position where, okay, I've got these two things I can believe.

Look, God is kind of a rival for me in this framework.

So I'm gonna try and just make this decision on my own.

And here's what happens in Genesis 3, 6.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

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

She examines the tree, completely ignoring what God said about the tree, and saying, I'm gonna go by just what I can figure out on my own.

She becomes an empiricist.

Just w whatever the data says, that's gonna be the decision that I make.

Whatever I can figure out from my own two eyes, from my own experiences, from my own Own five senses, that's going to be the basis for all truth and all existence.

And if I can't fit it in that framework, then it's not true.

So let's look at the tree and examine it on its own merits.

Yes, God, or whatever his name is, said that this was prohibited and that it would lead to death if I ate this tree.

But when I look at it, the fruit's beautiful.

And it looks good to eat.

And look, word on the street, this will make you wise.

In fact, the name of the tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

From everything I can tell, from my own senses, from my own reason, everything that seems perfectly rational, it's good to eat the tree.

And so now she's the one that determines good.

There is no truth outside of what she can see.

Isn't that insane for a creature to do, for a human person to do?

Yeah, that's right.

We we do it all the time.

We can see like a like we can see like a hundred yards, you know, unless there's like a building in the way.

But we're still like, well, if I can't tell with my five senses, then it's not real.

So she takes, she considers it on its own terms.

And she takes the fruit and she eats it.

And then in passing, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Adam was there through this whole conversation, next to her, saying nothing.

See, all the relationships are disordered.

Through this one prohibition, don't eat the fruit of that tree.

Everything else, game on.

This one tree, don't eat.

But now all the relationships become disordered.

Humans are called to take dominion over creation.

That means that under their good leadership, that creation will find its flourishing.

And what do we see pictured here?

The creature is telling the human what to do.

And the human is saying, okay, I'll take your word for it.

Abdicating the very responsibility that they had been called to.

Adam was the one that received the covenant from God.

Adam was the one that was told, of every tree in the garden, eat from it, enjoy.

But of this one tree in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, don't eat of it lest you die.

Do you know where Eve was when Adam got that news?

In his rib.

You know, not listening in.

This covenant was given to Adam because it was Adam's responsibility to care for his wife.

To protect her as she comes into the world, to show her, look, that you're in this world now, there's this order that God has put into it.

And one of the things that God has ordered is don't eat from that tree, because if you eat of it, you'll die.

And this responsibility that Adam had been given by being the one who had received this direct command from God to share it with Eve, he's standing right next to her.

While he sees the serpent deceiving her.

The disorder runs through.

Here's what happens Genesis 3:7.

Genesis 3:7

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

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

So the serpent, he was partially telling the truth.

Their eyes were opened, but what they were exposed to was not an addition to what they had been given.

It was a deficit.

Their eyes were open to see an emptiness that wasn't previously there.

They gain nothing.

They're only exposed to their loss.

In seeing beyond their limits, they only see their shame.

God is established as their rival, and this disordered relate, these disordered relationships will now become the norm for creation.

So what we see happen next, well, I can read it for you.

It's the next verse.

Genesis 3, 8, and 9.

This is where the curse starts to take place.

And 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?

Now, all of a sudden, notice God doesn't say anything.

They just hear him walking through the garden.

They're like, Oh man, sounds like God.

And so they now, instead of, that's a paraphrase.

So now, instead of seeing this ultimate goodness, hearing it, and thinking, the presence of the Lord.

In the presence of the Lord, there's fullness of joy.

Now, this ultimate joy is just a source of fear for them.

Congratulations on having your eyes opened.

Now your eyes can't even gaze upon the face of the source of all joy and goodness in the world without retreating and cowering in your fear and your shame.

This is the condition of humanity now.

This is real in us.

I think that there's this tendency, as we kind of psychologize our lives, to think that shame and guilt are just fictions to be overcome or to be ignored and realize, oh, that that's a fake feeling.

I'm feeling that because it's actually a lie.

No, know this.

Maybe this will resolve some tension in you.

The shame and the guilt that you feel is true.

It's real.

Before goodness, now corrupted in sin, we really are filled with this shame.

God doesn't drive them out of hiding.

He calls them out.

Where are you?

And he speaks to them in the order of their accountability.

He talks to Adam first.

He says, It was the woman you gave me.

Then he talks to Eve.

He says, It was the serpent who deceived me.

And then in ascending order, God describes what the world is going to be like now.

What we had seen before, when God spoke of his creation, it was just in blessing.

You know, when God says something, it happens.

When God says a thing is a certain way, that means it is a certain way.

When we say things, it doesn't work like that.

We could be right or wrong.

We just, rotten tomatoes helps.

Because in the aggregate, we're better sometimes.

So here's how the curse unfolds.

And there's a question, just to regard this quickly, there's a question, is this curse something that God is placing on the world positively?

Or is God just describing what the implications of our sin are in the normal world?

And the answer is, I don't know that it matters.

God created the world.

And God warned us against this sin.

So for these to just be the normal outflowing of the disordered creation from us, or to be positively the wrath of God being demonstrated, I think it's probably something like both.

So this is the curse that God places on the world.

When he says it, it means this is the way the world is.

Genesis 3, 14 to 15, he refers to the snake, and it says, The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

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

Now, I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking it earlier this week.

This is the story of how the snake lost its legs.

This is not the story of how the snake lost its legs.

This is not like a like a just so narrative of, yeah, it's not that's not the type of story it is.

Consider this.

In uh a couple chapters from now, we're going to be going through the flood.

And when they get out of the boat and God makes this covenant with Noah, he says, I've placed my bow in the sky, and this will be a symbol of my covenant faithfulness to you.

God didn't just create rainbows at that time.

That wasn't the invention of the first rainbow.

That we don't even, I don't think we even think that, right?

We don't read that story and think, oh, this is the this is and and this is the story of where rainbows come from.

Uh, what God is saying is, look, see this symbol that's in the sky?

I am now assigning it this meaning.

And so that whenever you see this, you need to tie this particular meaning to what you're seeing.

And so with the snake, he's saying, look, see how it slithers and crawls in the dust?

That's going to mean that it's cursed.

Now, whenever you see that, you remember I'm seeing a cursed thing.

What does the depth of sin look like?

It looks like my face is constantly in the dirt.

Now I'm getting the meaning of this thing that otherwise would have just been like whatever Steve Irwin saw when he saw snakes.

Which I think was different from the rest of us.

Now there's this second part of this strange promise in this serpent's curse.

It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

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

The strange promise of the discord that will exist between someone who is born of a woman and uh the serpent and the serpent's offspring.

And both of them get hurt.

The serpent has its head crushed, the offspring of the woman has its heel bruised.

I'm, you know, not an orthopedic surgeon, but if I had to choose which one, I wouldn't choose the head crushing.

They both get hurt, and there's this strange promise there.

We'll get to that later.

He goes on to the woman.

Genesis 3.16, the less popular of the 316s.

To the woman, he said, I will 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.

So notice where Eve is cursed.

Eve is cursed precisely where she is tasked to serve the Lord.

Adam and Eve were called to, what's like the first thing they're told to do?

Be fruitful and multiply.

Make more people.

We only have one way of doing that.

And the way that we make more people is women give birth.

And now this thing which was this blessing earlier, God blessed them and said, bear fruit, multiply.

Now at that very source of that blessing, there is pain.

In bringing children into the world, is full of pain.

And raising children up is full of pain in this way that taxes nearly every aspect of your humanity, especially for women.

So the source of what was initially blessing, now that sin has entered the world, becomes this experience of pain under the curse.

And then the relationship between the man and the woman.

Now they're disordered.

Remember, they stood before each other, they were naked, and they were not ashamed.

Well, now the woman's desire will be contrary to her husband's.

And what will the husband's response be?

Domination.

He will seek to rule over you.

This is a very different picture than what we saw last week in the garden, where we see Adam called to lead in this sacrificial way, this way where he lays himself down for the flourishing of the woman.

Now, the woman's desire is against her husband, and his desire is to rule over her.

Now, even the best marriages in the world have this gravitational pull where if things are left to their own devices, they will become rivals.

In the same way that the serpent describes that type of rivalry.

It's a fight for finite power.

Our culture barely even has a way of understanding any relationships outside of the language of power.

We explain everything in terms of power.

So this rivalry becomes the norm in marriage, and then Adam is cursed.

Genesis 3, 17 to 18.

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 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.

So notice that Adam is placed in the same Adam is cursed in the same sort of way that Eve is cursed.

What is this special thing that Eve is able to do that corresponds to God's blessing?

It's that she's able to bring more people into the world.

She's able to bear fruit and multiply.

And so that's where she's cursed.

Adam is called to tend to the garden, to work it, and to keep it.

And so now, where will he experience this sin?

This joyful cultivation will now be full of thorns and thistles that work to labor against us.

That's why work is like it is.

It's why it's so painful and difficult, and things don't go where you expect them to go.

And emails get misunderstood, and email exists.

No, email's fine.

Feel free to email me your questions.

Great questions last week, by the way.

But Adam is the one who held the covenant.

And so this curse becomes most terrible through what Adam receives and what is passed through to Adam.

The ultimate uh reality of the curse comes down on him.

This is what it says in 319.

It says, 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.

The promise of the tree was that if you eat of it, you will surely die.

Now Adam receives the naming of that curse in reality.

You are dust.

Now, you will die.

Now, we saw them eat the tree, and or they they ate the fruit and they didn't, they didn't die, right?

So the question is, all right, what are we talking about here?

What does this mean that they will die?

What is the curse that's really being described?

Augustine uh he says this if it be asked what death God threatened man with, whether bodily or spiritual, or that second death.

Now, that second death, that's a term that refers to when everyone, all people are finally resurrected at the end of time, we will stand before the great white throne of judgment, which Jesus sits on.

And to some, we will be resurrected unto life eternally with him.

And to others, we will be resurrected to be thrown into the lake of fire, a lake of eternal torment that was reserved for the devil and his angels.

And we will become a part of that.

Colloquially, we refer to it as hell.

That's what the second death means.

So if it be asked what death God threatened man with, whether bodily or spiritual or that second death, we answer it was all.

He comprehends therein not only the first part of the first death, wheresoever the soul loses God.

You know, that's the first part.

That's what happened right when they took the bite.

And the soul lost God, and so they hid in shame from the source of all goodness.

Nor the latter only, wherein the soul leaves the body.

That's the normal death that we experience.

You know, when someone dies, the soul leaves the body.

But also the second, which is the last of deaths, eternal and following after all.

So what death did they receive from sin?

What does it mean that the wages of sin is death?

It means all of them, the whole compass, the whole gambit.

Adam and Eve will be, they will die, you know, none of us have met them.

Everyone after them who is born from them inherits this death.

And have you ever wondered why something so utterly normal seems so awful?

It's because death really is awful.

Death really is the absence of God, the results of sin.

It is this terrible negative addition to the world.

We are eternally lost from God and sin.

In Adam, all of us who are the offspring of Adam die.

That is where we stand, looming over hell because of sin.

Now, in this very moment, there's this ray of hope, this shaft of light that goes into this terrible darkness.

It's the reason that we're all gathered here today.

In Genesis 3, 20 to 21, the man called his wife's name E.

Because she was the mother of all living.

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

So the first thing after this cursing, Adam hears all of this, and then Eve, she didn't have a name yet, which was fine because they were the only two people.

And Adam now names the woman and he names her Eve.

And he names her Eve, which means the source of life.

From her, all of life will come.

And we think, I get that.

This is what now, this is the story of how women have babies.

You know, notice the trend the way that we tend to treat this.

And what's happening here is we have to remember the curse against the snake, the curse against the serpent.

And what is promised there?

That from the offspring of the woman, not of the man, not of Adam, from the offspring of the woman, the serpent's head will be crushed.

And so Adam, in this small little shred, this little act of faith, he says, then we'll call her Eve.

Because I'm going to trust God when he says, you know what, life is going to come from her.

And we see this verse, this is referred to as the proto-evangelium.

This is the first gospel or the just before the gospel.

This is the gospel in its embryonic state.

That the dominion of Satan will be removed from the world.

You want to know how practical the Bible discusses and describes how Satan got dominion of the world?

Satan went to people, acted like king, and told them what to do, and we did it.

That's why the serpent is now, has dominion.

But that dominion will be taken away, and it will be taken away by the offspring of the woman.

And then God clothes them with an animal skin.

God literally clothes them with something else that was sacrificed so that their shame would be covered.

One day, a long time from this story, a man will be born of a woman who is not the seed of Adam.

Just born from a woman.

A virgin woman.

And that man will be Jesus for the story.

Jesus is born of this virgin woman, and uh so that he doesn't inherit this death that he would have inherited from Adam.

He's like this new representative of humanity.

And this Jesus is likewise, he's tested in a garden.

The serpent comes, Satan comes, and he tempts him in the garden and he promises him life.

But Jesus passes the test in the garden.

And later he's later in another garden, he's tempted again.

And he's not offered something to taste, he's threatened with something to taste.

He's threatened that he would taste the very wrath of God.

And Jesus drinks it.

In Jesus, we see that when the serpent comes, he does not succumb to the temptation.

When his bride is being deceived, Jesus steps in on behalf of his bride.

He lays down his own life.

That way the covenant might be fulfilled on her behalf.

Jesus becomes for us our salvation.

And he takes these terms, take and eat, which once meant condemnation and death.

And he offers them to us now, where he says, take and eat.

This bread, this is my body that's broken for you.

Because the death which was heaped, the death which you received because of sin, I have taken that death upon myself.

So now life can be yours.

Drink from this cup, my blood will be poured out for you.

And so just by faith in him alone, really, by faith in Jesus alone, we might be spared the eternal torment of hell and live with him for eternity.

This really is the message.

Really is the message of the cross.

We see the shape of it take place even right here at the fall.

What was being prepared in this terrible disaster of sin is this incredible glory of his redemption.

From now on, we see, we'll see these promises of redemption start to take root and develop into that glorious story of Jesus.

With that, let's take one question.

Can there be wisdom without rebellion or sin?

Yes, most certainly.

So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is something that it's difficult to think of outside of its name, but it's important for us to keep the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the context of God's prohibition against it.

What's the most fundamentally true thing about that tree?

It's that God says, when you eat of it, you'll die.

When we examine the tree on its own terms, then we're deceived by it.

And we think, oh, this wisdom, it's only accessible here.

But what is the beginning of wisdom?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And so what would the fear of the Lord look like in that very context of the tree?

It would look like, look, everything I can tell is, it looks tasty, I hear that it makes me wise, and it's beautiful.

So I think I'm gonna eat the fruit.

But the fear of the Lord says, yeah, look, I'm with you.

All that stuff is true, beautiful, tasty, says that it makes you wise, but God says, don't eat it.

And he's not like us, you know?

He's this, he created all of these things.

He created us, our very existence itself, we owe to him.

We know that he's good because this garden is amazing.

So the so what is real wisdom there?

It's to say, so I'm not gonna eat, I'm not gonna eat it.

The wisdom starts with a self-doubt, saying, yeah, look, everything I can tell looks great.

But who cares what I think?

God says if I eat it, I'll die.

So I'm not gonna eat it.

So, yes, there is there's uh most certainly most certainly wisdom um outside of rebellion.

The truest wisdom is outside of rebellion.

So it's a good question.

Um a little uh side note, because I think this is more to the heart of the question.

It seems like uh we don't get real wisdom in life without these hard experiences.

Um and the answer is well, it's not necessarily true.

We see lots of people that go through very hard experiences and become less and less wise, more and more hardened, more and more misunderstanding the world and their place in it.

But other people we see go through these very hard experiences, terrible experiences of the clutches of sin.

And God uses those things by his grace to make them so wise, to fill them with a hope that stretches far beyond the pain that they had seen.

So, in that sense, the terrible things that we go through and experience that we do and uh have done to us because of sin in the world, in us and in the world, God can use and does certainly use to bring us into his wisdom.

That's true of us in Christ.

Okay, let's take communion, let's take and eat, knowing that because of Jesus, this promise in Genesis 3, we have been set free from the clutches of sin.

Let's pray.

Holy Father.

These stories are so big.

I pray that you would give us the clarity now to understand the implications of this in our life.

Lord, would you teach us to cling independence to Jesus?

Would you show us the depth of the sin that we have inherited and participate in?

Lord, would you make us repulsed by it?

Because that would be to see things as they are.

And Lord, would you create in us a spirit of joy and celebration as we come to your table together today, knowing that from all these things, you did not abandon us even right after the curse.

You clothed us to bring us back into relationship with you.

Lord, you're reordering all of these relationships.

Pray that we would experience the fruit of that in this community.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.