Bible Study Genesis Part 38-Not Like God

The strangest detail in Genesis 3 might not be the fruit, the serpent, or the curse, but the moment Adam and Eve suddenly “know” they’re naked. Why does that realization hit so hard, and why does it lead to hiding? We walk slowly through Genesis 3:6-7 and the verses that follow, asking what the text actually says and what readers often assume, especially when it comes to shame, fear, and the meaning of being “opened” to good and evil.

We also explore common interpretations, including the idea that humanity lost a kind of glory after the fall of man. Then we put that theory under the light of Scripture, paying attention to God’s pointed question: “Who told you that you were naked?” That single line shifts the focus from bodies to knowledge, conscience, and the terrifying discovery of human vulnerability in the presence of a Holy God.

From there, the study widens into practical Christian living: why we blame God for tragedy but forget gratitude, why God isn’t interested in our opinion when His Word is clear, and how temptation keeps repeating the same pattern. Using 1 John 2, we connect Eve’s choice to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and we talk about how intellectual arrogance can dress itself up as wisdom while pulling us away from obedience.

If you care about Bible study, Biblical interpretation, and the real-world shape of temptation, this teaching will challenge your assumptions and sharpen your discernment. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who loves Genesis, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Why God’s Word Matters

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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.

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And when you train your mind to think of things at a certain time in a certain way, then you've generated a habit, and there isn't a better habit than studying God's word. Next we'll be praising the Lord. Next we're thanking the Lord. All of these certain habits will build up in our lives, and then the world will not be able to help to know that we belong to Him. And when they know we belong to Him, then they will see that they want to be the way we are and we will be able to communicate with them. All they need to do is accept our Savior and they can join the family. That is the way it goes. We love God's word, we love the gospel. Tonight we are still in the book of Genesis. We are still in the third chapter. We are still in the fourth, fifth, and sixth verse of the third chapter. I'm hoping we finish that tonight. So here we

Reading Genesis 3:6-7

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go. We're going to start with Genesis 3:6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Verse 7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. When we started this chapter, you'll remember that I said that this entire series of events is rather unusual. And here is one of the most unusual. After acquiring the knowledge of what's considered good and what's considered evil, Adam and Eve noticed that they were naked. Now, the way this reads, it appears to be cause and effect. They became aware of good and evil, and then they noticed they're naked. Now, we started talking about this a few weeks ago, but big surprise, we got sidetracked. Let's get back to it and see if we can learn something.

The Mystery Of Nakedness

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Now, what's puzzling and what causes me to be curious is why did they notice they were naked upon eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is being naked a sin? Is that what this story is telling us? Or is there another reason why Adam and Eve are acting so strangely? We know they were always naked because it tells us that at the end of chapter two. Are they just noticing it now? And does it all of a sudden feel different to them somehow? And if so, why? What about being naked causes them to be panicky? What could it be? Now I'm going to give you my answer. It's an answer I give you all the time. I don't know. And I don't think anyone other than the Lord Himself and Adam and Eve know for sure. Now, for some, this is pretty straightforward. They say these two were naked, and therefore that makes them ashamed. The message is we should all be ashamed when we're naked. That is what people think. Okay, well, of course, there are societal rules about being naked in public, and believe me, I agree with those. But these two weren't in public. Well, let me say they were the public. It was just the two of them. Nonetheless, the more puritanical among us see being naked as wrong, and such a thing should be prohibited. And that's what Adam and Eve perceive, since they had of late found out right from wrong, and being naked, at least to the prudish leaning, is in the latter category. Maybe, but it just seems odd. As I've said, it seems like there's more to this than we're what we're being told. In fact, it always seems like there's more to it than what we have presented to us.

The Lost Glory Theory

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Now, those that are interested in diving into this have offered some suggestions as to what happened. For instance, the great E. W. Bullinger states in reference to verse seven that Adam became naked-ish because he lost something of God's glorious likeness, as he calls it. What was once a part of Adam was now missing. And this is analogous, I suppose, to being naked in the mind of Dr. Bullinger, and that's why it's reported that way here in Genesis. Matthew Henry, another great commentator, says something similar, and I quote: the text tells us that they saw that they were naked, that is, that they were stripped, deprived of all the honors and joys of their paradise state, and exposed to all the miseries that might justly be expected from an angry God. They were disarmed, their defense had departed from them. Unquote. It would appear that Matthew Henry sees this as figurative language rather than literal, that this is a symbolic nakedness, I guess. I've even heard a very famous preacher bring up the suggestion that before the fall, before the sin, mankind had a sort of glory surrounding him, maybe emitting light or some other distinguishing characteristic, not simply making them look different, but whatever this was, it had a purpose. That this clothing of glory was a direct link to God's glory. And when Adam and Eve sinned, this holy skin, I guess, departed from them. And when they realized that had happened, they concluded that it was due to their sin. And the result was that they were ashamed of themselves. Now we'll talk about the shame thing in a second. So this line of thinking is that the sin of Adam and Eve actually transformed them from some previous state, and now they actually looked different than they did before. And that different look, if you will, persists to this day in us. And we won't get that original look back until Christ returns and we are once again transformed. Well, I will say quickly that I do believe we will be transformed when the Lord returns for us, because that's biblical. Paul speaking of that event says, 1 Corinthians 15, 51. Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Paul makes it clear that we will be physically changed. Now there is, however, no evidence in Scripture that I can see that any physical changes occurred as a result of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No evidence that I could see. However, I do think this idea of lost glory is possible. It might answer the question as to why God provided skins after the fall, which we will discuss in a moment. Yes, there is symbolic meaning, but God doesn't do everything just symbolically. There is actually a practical reason. What is the practical reason for providing skins to people who were naked who have always been naked? That's a question that is always on our minds. Why did God do that? And perhaps this lost glory has something to do with that. The problem is there's nothing in Scripture telling us that this is definitely the case. And there are actually a couple of other problems with the theory. If we look back just a few verses, specifically the last verse of the previous chapter, I already referenced this to you. Genesis 2.21. And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and of course you remember all this. And he took uh upon Adam and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. Verse 22. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. 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. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. Now here is my point. I read those other verses for context purposes, but here's what I specifically want to point out. Verse 25. And they were both naked, and the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. So it would appear to me at least that they started out naked. I believe I brought that up earlier. Naked was how they were created, which of course goes for all of us too. But is it a different naked than what we have in verse 3? The Bible doesn't say, and so we can't easily make such an assertion. We cannot assert that it's a different nakedness. The only thing we can assert from what we're told is it's the same. This is a problem with that lost glory theory. The lost glory theory doesn't have much supporting evidence. Yes, it seems logical, but it's still pure conjecture. Now, to further this point, let me skip ahead real quick. I just referred to this a moment ago, verse 9. And the

“Who Told You” And What Changed

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Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Now you have to really think about this. You have to read a little bit into it to see my point. I want you to notice that God didn't say, Hey, how did you become naked? He said, Who told you you were naked? In other words, how did you find out that you were naked? As we read before, they were always naked. It's just that, listen to me, the inference in Scripture as written is that they didn't know it or didn't care because they weren't ashamed. Now let's talk about that. When I say most, I mean most. Most commentators say that the nakedness of Adam and Eve made them ashamed. You've heard that yourself. But the Bible doesn't say that. Verse 10 again. And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Afraid. No mention of being ashamed. To say they were ashamed of their nakedness requires a stretch. You have to skip back to the second chapter and try to shoehorn the shame into here. It doesn't say anything about that, right? Now, if I may, here is what I think is going on. Remember, when I tell you I think or my opinion, this is nothing to do with anything that's sacred. You do not take this as gospel. I'm just giving you my opinion. So realizing they were naked, in my opinion, was a revelation to them that they were not as much like God as they previously thought they were or as they would hope to become by eating of this tree. I think that their nakedness brought them to the realization that they were physical beings. In that very moment, they came to the conclusion that they weren't spiritual like God, but corporeal like everything else that surrounded them. They thought that knowing good and evil was going to make them like God, but instead, the opening of their eyes only led them to discover how different they actually were from God, and that scared them. If you ask me, I'd say they felt for the first time more akin to the other earthly creatures than they did to God. And all of this must have made them feel vulnerable. I think they could now see that God was far more powerful than they were because he was spirit and they weren't. They were afraid because they knew how inferior a physical nature is in the face of a spiritual nature. And they were probably counting on a rather godlike transformation to protect them once God found out that they were disobedient. It gave them no power whatsoever. They wanted power out of it and got nothing. That transformation, the transformation into a godlike creature never came. And now they were, forgive the term, exposed. Now maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems to me that their naked appearance made them realize more than anything else, perhaps, that they'd been duped. When they saw that they did not become godlike as the devil led them to believe. And as a matter of fact, the only thing they really knew was that they were vulnerable, frail, fragile, error-bound creatures. And because of that, they headed to the woods to hide. Listen to me, our arrogance, our overconfidence, our self-confidence will one day be uncovered. Those who insist that they know more than God, those who have fallen for the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil will have to someday answer for their foolishness. God is going to ask, who told you it was okay to disobey me? And let me tell you, there will be no answer that could help you. Now let me admit that I know I'm stepping outside the biblical narrative in my speculation

Modesty, Moralism, And Misuse

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as to the thought processes of both God and Adam here. And I'm doing this in part to try and challenge the accepted view that their naked witness was somehow shameful to them. That in itself is outside the biblical narrative. Nowhere is that indicated. And let me repeat for what must be the 10,000th time. We are told some things, but not everything. That appears to be God's method here in Genesis and frankly throughout the Bible. God only tells us what we need to know. Okay, smart guy, then why are you wasting our time talking about stuff that's not there? Well, my primary reason is to get you curious about the things of God. We've talked extensively about that already, too. But I also want to counter the moralists of the church. They have seized on this verse to try to impose standards on the human race that I think were never intended. The sin of Adam and Eve, according to these prudes, is that they were naked, and their answer is no one should ever be naked. That's their thought. I have a hard time accepting that because we were created this way. God does not create sin. God would not create us in a sinful way. And let's face it, sometimes we have to be naked if we're going to perform some of our duties as human beings, if you catch my drift. Yes, of course, there is a time and place for everything. We should never be indecent. We should, like everything, be discreet and know how to behave properly according to the customs and rules of a polite society. Also, the human body is purposely designed. All biological bodies are intentionally designed to attract the opposite sex for the purpose of procreation. That's just a fact. But it's also an important thing to consider and not ignore. Listen to me. If someone tells you it's okay to be naked around strangers, then they're just being freaky and there's no other way to put it. Anyone, and I'm going to stand by this forever. Anyone who advocates for public nudity has hidden, and perhaps not so hidden, lascivious motives. There is a power in being naked, and we cannot pretend there isn't. Therefore, I repeat, we must use discretion. We must know the proper time and place to be naked. Nothing wrong with being naked as long as we're in an intimate place where there is little or no damage or no danger of, shall I say, tempting others. Now you may think that is a simplistic primitive view, but I stand by it. Adam and Eve were completely alone. There was no one else around them. In their location, being naked could not be a shameful thing. But let me repeat strongly all of this, most of this is just my opinion. Yes, we spent too long on that. Why? Because I say scripture must be examined closely, all of it. And we must treat it as if it's real and relative and that has something to teach us, even the uncomfortable parts. But mostly, we should not drag God's word down to our base, human-centered thinking. Some will have you believe that sexual immorality is all that God thinks about. They want you to believe that the only real sin is the sin of physical lust, and that's simply not the case. Going through life focused only on our midsection will lead us to totally miss what is truly important to God. All right, enough is enough. Now I'm going to do something we don't, I know we have to keep on going. We've spent so much time already on these things.

Why We Blame God For Evil

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I have to keep moving tonight. Now I'm going to do something I don't normally do. I'm going to back up a few verses. No moaning out there. I heard some moaning. Oh, back verse. Jeez, are we supposed to be forward? I'm sorry we have to back up a little bit because we spent too much time on this naked business. No snickering. Back to verse six. Actually, let's go to verse four so we can be reminded of the context. Genesis 3:4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. At the very heart of everything that stands between God and man is our tendency to see things as we'd like to see them. Down through the years, I've had people ask me why the world is in the mess that it's in. They'll say, How could God let this or that happen? Well, anyone that knows me knows that I usually start off by answering that question with a question. That may not be polite, but I do so in order to make a point. In fact, I don't usually expect an answer to this question, answering question, and I almost never do. This is how I respond. Why do most people blame God for the bad things, but neglect to thank him for the good? And I'm not just talking about some innocuous, mindless utterance and unthinking and insincere. Oh, thank God. That's not what I mean. I'm referring to glorifying God and truly acknowledging him as the source of all things, living a life of gratitude and respect and focus on him as our provider. I mean, if your car gets broken into and someone steals your Nana's wedding ring, the one she gave you before she died, you're likely to cry out, God, why would you let this happen to me? But then when the police later find that ring in some pawn shop downtown, you're not, you're not as quick with the praises and the amens as you were with the angry questions. Sure, you may blurt out, oh, thank the Lord, or something similar, but your heart isn't in it. It becomes a ritualistic response. God doesn't want to have anything to do with ritualistic responses. Nonetheless, most of the time when someone asks me why God allows this or that, it's usually after some larger, more lamentable tragedy like the recent gun violence incidents we've been experiencing here. They'll say, John, why would God allow such evil in this world? And then I'll start my answer by pointing out the fact that when Adam sinned, the world was cursed and we all fell into a depraved condition. And I'll spend a few minutes talking about that all along, watching my friend's face grow grayer and angrier. And then I'll hear something like Well, I don't think the God I worship would ever do something like that. It's unjust. Now, let me say it doesn't matter what we feel or what we think. God is God, and He's not interested in our opinion. You will not find anywhere in the Bible where God asks anyone their opinion. And there are a lot of brilliant men in the Bible, and he didn't ask a single one of them, what do you think, Paul? Is it good? Should I do that, Paul? Moses, come over here. I got a question for you. Never heard any of that? God's not interested in our opinion. And by the way, if you want to know how the one and only true God thinks about almost anything, it's not hidden. It's right here in his word. And if your thoughts or your feelings are in conflict with that, well, then you're taking your chances. The answers to your why questions are right here in Scripture. And what God says goes. And an unwillingness to accept that has led to the downfall of so many going all the way back to our those very that very first couple. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, God said the tree meant death. Eve said that it was good for food, it was nice to look at, and it was wisdom giving.

Scripture Over Feelings And Opinion

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By the way, this is the core of all the temptations we'll ever face. The apostle John lays it out succinctly in his first letter, 1 John 2, 15. It's referenced on your notes there. We didn't put it all there, but you can look at it later. This is a very, very important passage in Scripture. This is from the Apostle John. Love not the world. Neither, this is the best advice any of you could get. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. It always comes down to this: do you choose to love the world or do you choose to love the Father? That is the dividing line between sin and holiness. Back to the Apostle John, verse 16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. John is demonstrating with absolute clarity, albeit indirectly, he wasn't talking about Eve, but this is exactly what happened to Eve. She saw the tree was good for food. That's what John called the lust of the flesh. You know, most of

Lust Of Flesh, Eyes, And Pride

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us hear that phrase lust of the flesh and think all it means is indulging our sexual appetites. And by the way, that doesn't affect everybody. Some people can resist the lust, the sexual appetites, but that isn't the only thing John is talking about. Today we've completely ignored the danger of succumbing to all of our other desires. For example, we seem to think it's okay to get fat and sassy. But gluttony is still a sin to God, and bowing to any of the lusts of the flesh is despicable in God's mind. Listen to Paul's warning, Philippians 3:18 and 19. For many walk of whom I have told you often, and I'll tell you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. What kind of person is that, Paul? Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. You're going to hear that over and over and over in God's word. And all the world is trying to tell you is to ignore what God says. Because God is telling you to ignore them. And He's giving you a good reason for it. Because your end is destruction if you mind the things of the world. I'm going to say it again. People don't attend this Bible study because they don't like to hear these things. They don't want to shun the world. They like the world. They want to keep their eye on the world. Like Lot's wife kept her eye on Sodom. And what did it do to her? I don't believe that. Do you? Sodom, what a that's a joke. It's an allegory at best, John. It happened. Back to Eve. So she expressed lustful flesh, to use the Apostle John's words, when she hungered after something that God told her was prohibited. Her belly said, That really looks good for food. I really want that. I'm not going to ignore that appetite. It feels so good to feel that way. Sammy, don't eat that mood. Don't eat that mud. It's not good for you. Well, it looks like yummy chocolate ice cream. Well, it's not. Eve, don't eat the fruit off of that tree. You may think it's good food, but it isn't. She chose to follow her appetites. Eve also saw, she perceived, she decided that the tree was pleasant to the eye. Going back once again to John's first letter, we can say that fits perfectly into the category of the lust of the eyes. This is a big problem for many. They see things that look pretty and they want them. And let me tell you, our eyes get us in much more trouble than the body parts located a bit lower. In fact, that part of our anatomy doesn't even get started until our eyes get a hold of our temptations. The beauty of this world's objects can so easily distract us from our duties toward God. And then Eve considered the tree desirable to make one wise. This too is on John's list. Maybe a little harder to see, but it's what he called the pride of life. Listen, we all want to be the smartest guy in the room. We want others to look up to us. We want others to come to us for our opinion. We want to be the wise one. Listen, I'm telling you, that's what nearly destroyed the church. The age of enlightenment was the impetus of man's intellectual arrogance toward God. Catherine said to me earlier, this hasn't ended, has it? It sure hasn't. We still think as if we're in the age of enlightenment,

Intelligence, Curiosity, And Arrogance

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as if we're smarter than God is. And listen, I know that the last few centuries, when this age of enlightenment took hold, when we started to think we were smarter than God, was no question a time of magnificent scientific achievement. Mankind's knowledge has expanded as it never did before. But we take it too far. We become dazzled by our self-promotion. We buy into our own hype. We start to think that we can do anything. We still think that. Instead of realizing that all we've done is come across the handiwork of someone else, really only peeled back someone else's masterpiece, we acted as if upon uncovering these great mysteries, that we were actually the ones that brought them into existence. And instead of humbly realizing that all we've done is happened on something magnificent from the very beginning, who no doubt human beings, no doubt, were created with a big, powerful brain. We've always thought there's no limit to how smart we can be. So much so that man was easily convinced, he's easily convinced that he can even be smarter than the one who created that skull-stuffing organ. Listen, I will tell you that I believe that God instilled in us a boldness of mind and purpose. In my opinion, God intended man to be curious. I believe God purposely gave us an immense capacity to learn. And I think he did that because he wanted us to discover those parts of the creative process that he didn't explicitly share with us in Genesis. I've said this over and over as we've talked about the creation. He didn't take the time to tell us in everything. For example, he didn't tell us about the dinosaurs, but instead, he gave us the drive and the opportunity to find them, to study them, to understand them. He didn't tell us that he created black holes in the universe, but he did equip us with the intellect and environment to find those things out on our own. I've said to you before, the earth is perfectly positioned and perfectly built with this atmosphere to see out into the heavens. No other planet is built like this one. This planet is built for discovery. That's why we discover things. But like everything else, we abuse our gifts of curiosity and intelligence, and we've crowned ourselves the masters of the universe because we've yet to discover anyone smarter than us. You know me. I want to park here for many more hours, but I have to remind myself that we need to move on. So let's leave that there. Next time, let's say we try and try and make some progress through the third chapter of Genesis. It's a very important book. See you then.

Next Time And Ministry Closing

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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. Please join us again soon. New content is being added all the time, so make sure you check back often. For more information on Chapel Ministries, including our YouTube channel and podcasts, please visit www.chapelontheweb.com. And if God has laid it upon your heart to share materially with us, we encourage you to follow the links to our secure giving page. Please note, Chapel Ministries is not an IRS registered nonprofit organization, and your donations to this program are not tax deductible. It's our hope that you do not rely on taxing authorities to decide for you who is worthy of your generosity.