Genesis Chapter 3 part 5

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back. Now we've come a long way going through our study of the book of Genesis, and we're going to wrap up chapter three today and the final lesson on chapter three and and get into chapter four in the next lesson. So far, have we watched a serpent plant his question in the garden and we've watched the fall happen in just six words. We heard God walking in the cool today and asking the question, where are you? A frightening question. And we saw the blame shift game begin. And we heard the curses on the serpent. And inside that curse, the first gospel. And we felt the weight of the thorns and the toil and the pain and the dust. Now we come to the final verses of chapter three. And these verses, I don't believe they get the attention that they deserve. Most people stop at the curse and they hear the consequences and they close the chapter there. But verses 20 through 24 is where grace breaks through most clearly in this narrative. It's where we see for the first time in human history what God does with sin when his people cannot fix themselves. And these five verses contain the first act of faith after the fall, the first sacrifice in human history, the first picture of atonement, and the exile that sets the stage for every story in the Bible that follows. And a closing image that is not despair, but the beginning of a very long road home. So let's read the text here in Genesis chapter 3, starting in verse 20. And I want you to catch this, it's so interesting. It says, Now, after all of this, I want you to catch this. Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord said, Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him from the Garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So he drove the man out, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. The first thing that happens after the judgment and the cursing of verses 14 through 19 is that Adam names his wife. She's not named up until this point. Now the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. Now stop and think about what just happened. God had just told them, hey, you're going to die now. And you're dust, and you're going to return to dust. Death has just entered into the human story. The curse hangs over the ground. And pain and toil and mortality are now the human inheritance of that fall, of that sin. And Adam's response: the very first thing he does after hearing the verdict is to name his wife the mother of all the living. Not the mother of the dying, not the mother of the doomed, not the but not anything negative, the mother of all the living. And this is not despair. This is actually a deep faith. Adam had just heard God's promise in verse 15: the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. What Adam heard was that life would continue. The enemy would not have the final say. And Adam, standing in the wreckage of the garden, believed God. And he named his wife accordingly. This woman will be the mother of life, not of death, but of life. Now the Hebrew name for the word Eve comes from a root word that actually means to live, to give life, or living one. And it's connected to a Hebrew word, which means life. And so Adam is making a declaration that's very important here. Adam's making a declaration with this name, uh saying, hey, God said, You will die. And Adam says, This woman is the mother of all living things. And so this is one of the great unsung moments of faith in the entire Old Testament. Abraham believed God and was counted to him as righteousness. But before Abraham, before Noah, before the law, Adam believed the promise of Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, and named his wife accordingly. It was the early church father Irenaeus that noticed that uh that noted that Adam naming the wife after the fall was his confession of faith in the coming seed. He wrote, Adam showed by this act that he had not entirely lost hope. He heard the promise of God and he was holding on to that. Now, every human who has ever lived traces their physical origin back to this woman. There's actually scientific studies that show that a shared DNA, a shared ancestor. But there's a deeper meaning in the New Testament that's unlocked for us. Paul writes in Galatians chapter 4, verse 26, but the Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. And in Revelation chapter 12, it describes a woman widely understood to represent both the uh representing both the church who gives birth to the male child and will rule over the nations. Many see this as the seed of the woman from Genesis 3, 15, still echoing throughout Revelation. The point is that Eve's name is not just biographical, Eve's name is prophetic. Now, the next thing I want you to see this is the garments made of skin. Again, this is very debated. There's a lot of conversation, a lot of questions about this, but I think it's very clear when you look at the text. This is a theologically loaded verse. And this is a verse that I think a lot of people in modern church just read over and they don't realize that they just read the entire gospel. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them. So packed inside those words, we see the first death in human history, the first sacrifice in human history, uh, the first substitution, substitutionary atonement. The theology of the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament is right there in that verse, and the foundation of what Christ would accomplish on the cross. So let's walk through this. In Genesis chapter 3, verse 7, after the fall, Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. Again, that was the human solution. That was religion, temporary, inadequate, uh, self-made, man-made. God replaces here their coverings with garments of skin. Now we have to ask the question: where did the garments of skin come from? To have garments of skin, that means that an animal had to die. Now, this is not stated explicitly in the text. I understand that, but it is the only possible conclusion. You cannot have garments of skin without the death of a creature. There's no other way. And this is the first death recorded in all of Scripture, not a human death, an animal death. An innocent creature who had done nothing wrong died so that the guilty could be covered. This is what is known as substitution. This is the innocent dying in place of the guilty. This is the logic of the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament. That's where it comes from. And it is the logic of the cross. Every lamb ever offered on an altar in Israel, every Passover sacrifice, every day of atonement offering, every burnt offering, all of it in Genesis chapter 3, verse 21, unpacked over 2,000 years of covenant history, building up to the time when you would finally get to Jesus. And I want to make sure we don't miss something here. Adam and Eve made their own covering and it was not enough. God made their covering and it was sufficient. The difference between these two sentences is the entire difference between religion and the gospel. In religion, we say, I cover myself. I practice morality. I have rituals that I walk in, and I put on a performance to make sure that God is pleased with me. The gospel says God covers me through his sacrifice at his own cost. And notice God did not leave the covering on a bush for them to pick up. God himself clothed them. He put the covering on them himself. This is the grace of God in four words, and he clothed them. Origen in the third century taught that the garments of skin pointed to the incarnation. Just as God covered Adam and Eve with flesh, God himself put on flesh in Jesus Christ. The word became skin, flesh. God clothed himself in humanity so that he could clothe humanity in righteousness. That's from Origen. The garments of skin were a picture of the humility of God. The creator of the universe stooped down and sowed a garment for his fallen creatures. Augustine in the fourth century connected the garments of skin to baptism and the new life in Christ. He wrote, Just as God clothed Adam in the skin of a dead animal, so God clothed the believer in the righteousness of Christ who died in our place. Paul in Romans chapter 13, verse 14, says, But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regards to its lust. Galatians chapter 3, verse 27, Paul says, For all of you who were baptized into Christ hath clothed yourself in Christ. And so the garment of Genesis chapter 3, verse 21, is the garment of Christ's righteousness. What God began in the garden with animal skin, he completed on a cross with the blood of his son. Now in the ancient world, clothing was a powerful symbol of status and dignity. Consider the Mesopotamian culture. To clothe someone was an act of honor and acceptance. A king would clothe their servant as a sign of favor. Now to strip someone of their garment was to humiliate them and to shame them. In the Bible, this language carries throughout. The prodigal son is clothed in the best robe when he returns, a sign of restoration. The high priest's garments were detailed and glorious. They pictured a sign of dignity before God. So when Adam is there and Eve is there, and God comes and he clothed them, he's not just providing warmth, he's restoring dignity. They had lost their covering of innocence. They had lost the shamelessness of the garden. And God, at the cost of blood, gave it back to them with a covering, a new covering that required a death to provide, a covering that would not wither away like fig leaves, a lasting cover, and something that pointed forward to the day when the covering would be complete and eternal. Now, let's walk through this just for a minute. Verses 22 through 24. Before God sends them out, God speaks within himself. Notice what he says: Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. These this verse raises questions that have occupied theologians for centuries. First, a question that comes up often is God being sarcastic? The serpent promised you will be like God, and now God says the man has become like one of us. Many scholars believe, though, God is speaking with a deep irony here. Yes, they they now know good and evil, but not the way God knows it. God knows evil from the outside. He knows every part of it. As the Holy One, He's the one who sees evil and judges evil. Humanity knows evil from the inside as participants in it. And this is not ascent, this is descent. The serpent promised to Adam and Eve elevation, but what arrived to them was actually devastation. I don't want you to miss the grace of God here, though. God says he might take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever, and therefore he drives them out of the garden. And on the surface, that sounds like punishment. God is keeping them from the tree of life. He is blocking immortality. But I want you to think carefully about what it would mean to eat from the tree of life in their current condition. It would mean that they would live forever in a fallen state. They would live forever in a broken body, separated from God, living forever in sin and shame and pain and toil with no hope of redemption, with no possibility of being restored, and eternal hell on earth. God blocking the tree is not a life of cruelty. It is the most merciful thing that he could have done in that moment. He was not slamming the door on humanity. He was keeping the door open to something better. Death, as terrible as it is, is also mercy. It means the fallen state is not permanent. It means the story is not over. It means there's still a way back home. There's a great theologian. I was reading one time, and he said, God in his mercy refused to let his creatures be imprisoned forever in corruption. In other words, death was the door through which redemption would one day walk. The exile from the tree was, a tree of life was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of the journey back home. In Genesis chapter 3, verse 23 through 24, it uses different words for leaving the Garden of Eden. In verse 23, the Lord God sent him out. In verse 24, it says he drove the man out. The second word is much stronger. It means to expel, to drive away. And the same word is used later in Genesis when Joseph's brothers drive him away. It's a word of exile, of forced departure, of being removed from its place you cannot return to on your own terms. That means that everything after Genesis chapter 3, verse 24, is the long road back home. And that road runs through people like Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and the prophets and ultimately Jesus. And then we see in Revelation 22, the gates are opened, the tree of life is restored, and the exile is finally over. So the Bible from Genesis chapter 4 to Revelation chapter 21 is a story of humanity simply finding their way home and God walking with them every step of the way. Now, we see also here that God stations cherubim and a flaming sword at the east of the garden to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, now what is a cherubim? Or what is what is a cherubim? Through the Old Testament, these are figures that are the guardians of God's holy presence, the figures whose wings overshadow the Ark of the Covenant, the creatures whose uh forms are woven into the veil of the tabernacle. These are beings who surround the throne of God in Ezekiel's vision. They are not chubby little winged babies of the Renaissance paintings. Uh people do not become these things. They are fearsome guardians, guardians of holiness. Where God's glory dwells, the cherubim are present. And here they guard the way to the tree of life. And here's what most people miss, right? The cherubim reappear in the tabernacle, and uh there are two of gold with their wings spread, overshadowing the mercy seat, which set on the top of the Ark of the Covenant, which set inside of the most holy place, the place where God met with his people. So the same cherubim who guarded the way to God in Genesis chapter 3 marked the place where God came to meet with humanity in the tabernacle. And so they're not just blocking the way, they're making the place where they will one day be reopened. Or they're marking the place, I apologize. They're marking the place where the way to God will one day be reopened. And in the in the New Testament, when Jesus dies on the cross, what we see is the veil of the temple tears, it tears in two. And the veil that was embroidered with cherubim is torn. The guardians of the closed way are torn apart, and the flaming sword is satisfied, and the way to the tree of life is open again. This is what the writer of the book of Hebrews says. And Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19 and 20 said, Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh. Now, through the veil, through the cherubim, through the flaming sword, by his blood, the way home is open. Now, one of the most consistent themes in all of human history, uh, of all of human literature, across every culture and every century is exile. One of the most consistent themes. The longing for home. The sense of being a stranger in a strange land is something that everyone talks about. This is a common thing that we have. The ache for a place that you have never been, but somehow you long for. The ancient Greeks wrote of Odysseus spending 20 years trying to get home. The Hebrew people wept by the rivers of Babylon. Um, how can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? The great Irish and Scottish uh ballads are saturated with people singing about longing for a home. Tolkien's entire mythology is built on a theme of people driven from their ancient home. Where does this universal longing come from? It comes from Genesis chapter 3, verse 24. Every human being born east of Eden, born into a world that's just not quite right, into a life that is beautiful, but a life that is broken, into a story that's not finished yet. C.S. Lewis wrote, Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant ends, but will not encourage us to mistake them for our home. And so that ache that you feel for something more, for something permanent, for something that will not just fade away or decay, that's not weakness. That's your soul's knowledge that it was made for something greater, that it was made for Eden. And the gospel says, I am the road back home. I've reopened it. At the cross, God says, here's the way there. Now, one more thing for the apologists who are studying this with me. Every human religion ever devised is an attempt to do what Adam and Eve did with fig leaves. Every religion to cover up shame, to bridge the gap, to earn back what was lost. Every one of them, however sincere, though, runs into the same problem. The covering of religion is never enough. Here's why. Because the problem is not behavioral, it's relational. It's not that we have done bad things, it's that we are separated from the God that we were made for. And a separated relationship can never be repaired from only one side. God has to come to us, God has to provide, and God has to do the covering. And that's exactly what is happening here in Genesis chapter 3, verse 21. It's what's showing us, and exactly what he does on the cross at Calvary. Isaiah chapter 61, verse 10 says, I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exalt in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation, he has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness. Genesis chapter 3, verse 21, we see that's completed in Jesus. And the Bible ends where it begins in a garden. Revelation chapter 22, verses 1 through 3 says, Then he showed me a river and the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God, and of the lamb in the middle of its street on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse. What is this? A tree of life, not guarded, not blocked, bearing fruit, available for the healing of the nations, and there would no longer be any curse. Genesis chapter 3, verse 14, cursed are you. Genesis chapter 3, verse 17, cursed is the ground. Revelation 22, 3, it's no longer any curse. And so the story that begins with curse ends with a curse that is taken away. The story that began with exile ends with homecoming. The story that began with closed gates ends with open gates. Revelation 21, 25 says, of the New Jerusalem in the daytime, its gates will never be closed. That's so important. The gates that closed in Genesis chapter 3, verse 24 are open forever in Revelation 21, 25. The Bible is one story from cover to cover, and the ending is beautiful. Now, stop just for a minute as we as we start kind of wrapping this up. Stop and think for just a minute about Jesus in the garden. The redemption of Genesis 3 does not only end in Revelation. It takes a pivot in the middle in a garden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam faced a choice and he surrendered. In the garden, when Jesus prayed, he faced a choice and he held strong. In Eden, the man said, Not your will, God, but mine. In the garden, Jesus said, Not my will, but yours. In Eden, the man hid from God among the trees. In the garden, the son knelt before God. In Eden, the fall happened at night while the man was passive. In the garden with Jesus, redemption began at night while the son was in agony. Every detail here is intentional. The gospel writers knew exactly what they were doing. They were writing the reversal of Genesis chapter 3. And then after the cross, after the burial, you see, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and she finds a stone rolled away, and she encounters someone she thinks is a gardener. In John chapter 20, verse 15, it says, Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. She thought she was talking to a gardener. And in a way she was right, because Jesus is the true gardener, the second Adam, the one who came to tend what the first Adam let go to ruin. And he met with her in a garden on the morning that death died. Genesis chapter 3 ends with a man and a woman walking east, away from the garden, away from the presence of God, into a world that now fights back, into a life marked with pain and toil and death. And yet they're not alone. They're clothed. They carry a promise. The seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. And so they walk. And in Genesis chapter 4, the story continues. Eve conceives and gives birth to Cain. And her and her words at his birth are remarkable when she says, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And she names her firstborn and she acknowledges God in the naming. Even after the exile, even east of Eden, the relationship with God is not severed. It's wounded, but it's not over. And so Genesis chapter 4, as we get there in our next lesson, is one of the darkest chapters in all of the Bible. And it answers several questions that are just as urgent as Genesis chapter 3. It answers questions like if sin entered through Adam and Eve, how quickly does it spread? What happens when sin plays out in the next generation to our children? What's the connection between worship and violence? And why did God accept Abel's offering and not Cain's? What does it mean that sin is crouching at the door? What is the mark of Cain? And what does that actually mean? And why does a chapter about murder with the first mention of the calling on the name of the Lord? And so Genesis chapter 4 shows us the fall in the second generation after. It shows us what sin does and how it's not contained, how it multiplies and escalates. It moves from a piece of fruit to a body on the ground in a single generation, but it also shows us something else. It shows us that even in the darkest chapters of human history, even in the story of the first murder, God is still present, still speaking, still offering. In the last verse of Genesis, chapter 4, after all the bloodshed and exile says this in chapter 4, verse 26 of Genesis. At that time the Lord began to call, I'm sorry, at that time the people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Even in the generation after the first murder, east of Eden, with blood on the ground, people began to call on the name of God. So the darkness does not win. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson, and I hope to see you in our next lesson as we go next week and we start into Genesis chapter 4. I hope you've enjoyed this. Until next time, have a blessed day.