Our beginnings

 

The Fall – Genesis chapter 3

 

God carefully created two people who were unique in their construction and purpose. They were granted the unique ability to relate to the Creator and respond to Him.

 

Their nature was free and innocent and the purpose in their creation was to glorify God and serve Him.

 

Both Adam and Eve were innocent. They were the only two people (beside Jesus) who had free will because they lacked the capacity to understand either good or evil, in relation to the other. It is like someone who has not been exposed to darkness, cannot understand light.

 

We see in chapter three of Genesis; the purpose of creation is revealed in the fall of man and the plan of God to redeem man.

 

God gave a single prohibition to Adam, which became the test of their willingness to follow Him fully. It was NOT a trap, yet without such a test, there could be no true relationship because they would not know the nature of God and how He responds to sin. Without the fall, man would not have understood that God is not only a God of mercy but a God of wrath and a God of judgement but above all He is a God of grace.

 

Gen. 3:1-8:

“Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.” The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! 

For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.” 

Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. 

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

Now 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.”

 

Moses bridges the end of chapter two to chapter three to introduce us a new character, Satan.

 

Satan

The prophet Ezekiel tells us that Satan was a created being (Eze. 28:11-19). God created him with wisdom and beauty. He was perfect at the time of his creation. He had a unique ability called “the power of contrary choice”, the ability to choose contrary to one’s nature. God does not have this nature and He cannot sin. Satan was holy and perfect, but he had the capacity to make an imperfect and unholy choice. He was a cherub and God anointed him to be of the highest order of cherub.

Ezekiel says that “unrighteousness was found” in Satan and “had sinned” and he went from angel to angel trying to secure their allegiance by slandering God. One-third of the angels joined him in this violence by leading a revolt. He was then “cast out of the mountain of God”. His perfect nature was corrupted. The root cause of this violence was pride. His perfect beauty caused his pride which corrupted his wisdom. And the prophet ends his discussion with the future final judgement of Satan.

The Garden of Eden was not created until Day 6 and it would be fair to assume that Satan sinned before Day 6.

Satan is quoted first time in the Bible in Genesis, and he is represented by a serpent. It emphasizes his craftiness (arum) just like the serpent who was the most subtle of all beings God created.

He approaches the woman in the garden and uses a suggestion to weaken the obedience of Eve and doubt God. And they make a conversation in the garden. She tries to defend God’s Word, but she does not get it right.

Firstly, she makes God’s Word more restrictive (neither shall you touch - v3) while neglecting to emphasize the freedom God gave to eat all other fruits (you can surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Gen. 2:16) and Satan de-emphasizes the penalty (“not surely die” instead of the word of God who said:  “you shall surely die”). Obviously, Eve is not familiar with God’s word.

 

Here we see the dangers in failing to know God’s Word well enough. Sometimes we are too restrictive (legalism) and at times we make it less restrictive. Legalism leads to resentment and frustration and ultimately it drives people away from obedience to God. When religious minded people depart from the Word of God, they tend to invent their own ideas and interpretations and substitute theirs for God’s Word. When we do not know the Word, we can also be faced with a moment of decision which lead to us being too liberal and more likely to do the wrong thing.

Every word of the Scriptures matters. Paul said to Timothy: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16)

 

The path of sin:

1.     Satan attacks the Word of God with lies (he said to Eve: “you will not surely die”)

2.     Christians are ignorant of the Word and fall in his trap (her actions after listening to Satan: “she saw… she took… she ate… she gave”)

3.     Satan seduces his victim and invite her to taste something that is better than God’s Word, and tells her that it will bring her more benefit (he said to Eve: “you will be like God”)

 

Woman saw…

Woman saw that the food was a delight. She allows lust to guide her.

The Hebrew translation for delight is “taavah” which means intense longing and desirable to make one wise means “chamad” in Hebrew which means to covet.

Woman is giving us a powerful insight of how sin works in all of us.

Jesus said: “The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness.” (Luke 11:34)

Here Woman is allowing her sight to direct her decision and NOT the Word of God.

James said: “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin accomplished, it brings forth death.”

 

Woman grabs…

Her poor memory of God’s Word takes her closer to fall in the trap of Satan. Or maybe when she grabs the fruit, she realised she did not die. As she does not know what death means, she realised nothing has changed. That brings her to doubt God even further. But the Bible tells us that she died spiritually. She ceased to be innocent, holy and have fellowship with God. From her limited perspective, nothing changed when she ate because she was not in the presence of God.

 

Adam was “with her”.

Paul said: “It was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression”.

Adam did not protest when Eve gave her the fruit to eat. He did not quote the Word of God to Woman. He just ate. That is why God lay the sin of mankind at the feet of Adam.

Paul said: “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22)

 

“Both their eyes opened”.

It was only when Adam ate that mankind fell into sin. Eve was deceived by the serpent and deception was a legitimate defence.  And because Woman being of one flesh with Adam, she experienced sin with him. His eating brought both man and woman to fall.

 

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

Nakedness means vulnerability and shame. So, we see that with sin comes a sense of exposure and vulnerability. Or the need to cover up and conceal ourselves. It is evident that God has planted in us a conscious. We instinctively recognise our unholiness in the presence of God. And their sin also meant that they lost their transparency between one another. It would be fair to say that all bad communication and difficulties in marriage trace back to sin.

Both Adam and Woman are experiencing a spiritual change, but they react physically and cover themselves. This shows the dilemma that the world has when facing their sinful nature and spiritual defect.

Now that we have a fallen nature, we cannot fix our spiritual defect through physical actions. Our spiritual defect cannot be improved through corrective actions. We cannot work our way out of a fallen nature.

 

The Grace of God

God makes a noise…

God makes a noise so that they do not appear in the presence of God in their sinful state. God knows what they have done. God is compelled by His own perfect nature to judge sin and not ignore it.

Moses said: “But He (God) said: “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”

 

God calls out to them…they are naked and afraid.

God does not want to destroy mankind. He is allowing Adam and Woman to repent, He is giving them an opportunity for repentance, so they can admit their guilt.

Adam is afraid. Fear of God has come upon Adam as a result of his shame produced by sin. Sin produces a debt before God and an instinctive reason to fear God.

In the previous chapter, Moses mentioned that they were both naked and not ashamed?

“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25)

Why was it important for Moses to point out that before the fall, man and woman were not ashamed of their nakedness? He is connecting evil with our shame of being naked. It implies there was transparency in relationship with God and man before the fall. From God’s point of view, He is transparent, and nothing is hidden. The shame to hide always informs us that we have done something wrong.

 

God must judge sin. God responds.

The word for curse in Hebrew is arar. It always means a divine judgement of condemnation from God.

1.    To the snake – the animal is cursed.

The serpent has been an unwitting participant in this act of deception. God curses the snake, and it is a permanent state of judgement. The snake will crawl and will eat the dirt, meaning he will walk in shame with his face down.

2.    To the snake – Satan is cursed.

God put enmity between Woman and the snake. It is an enmity between the seed of Satan and the seed of the woman.

2a       Who is the seed of Satan – the corrupted sinful children who are reproduced through Man and Woman by Satan’s deception in the garden and who belong to him. It is all unbelievers who have ever lived.

2b       Who is the seed of Woman – the virgin birth. This is the only way that God brings enmity between Christ and Satan. Christ being the seed that will come from a woman when God is ready.

Paul said: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say. “And to offsprings”, referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring”.

2c.      Each Seed will be bruised by the other.

Satan will bruise the heel of the Messiah. The heel is the least place to get badly hurt or killed. While the head is the most vulnerable part of the body and can produce a fatal kill.

The heel is a reference when Christ goes on the cross. It happens because Satan indwell Judas and thus raises a crowd against Christ. The irony is that Satan did not know he was fulfilling the prophesy of the Messiah which will bring his own demise. Christ will bruise Satan on the head. This refers to the time when Christ will return and put an end to Satan.

 

3.    Childbirth pains for the woman

This is grace and not a curse.  We are taught as believers to accept tests as trials to glorify God. What the Scriptures view as pain is different to what the world teaches.

To what end did God say that Woman will suffer during childbirth? The pain of childbirth becomes a memorial in the woman’s body as the pain that God himself must now endure when He goes in the process of birthing new life in Christ. God will experience pain in the process to make up for the sin of man, but the result of that pain is the glorious new birth.

Jesus said: “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers her anguish, for joy that a human being has been born in the world. So also, you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:21-22)

It is a privilege of God’s grace that Woman bears in her body a small version of what God Himself did on the cross. The birthing process of birthing new life for His own glory for the saving of mankind.

 

4.    Your desire shall be towards your husband and your husband shall rule over you.

God has given to the woman a desire for her husband. The Hebrew word for desire is teshukah which implies sexual desire. In return the husband has a role of protecting and guiding her.

Before God sends Man and Woman out of the garden, God brings unity in the family. Outside the garden they will face the enemy because Satan has been given a time to rule over the earth.

The only strength is the family unit in a strong relationship. A woman who desires her husband and a husband who cares for his wife.

In the garden, Woman took a front row and confronted the enemy head on. God is correcting that. Man takes the front row and protect his family. God is providing grace to the woman and to the family.

 

5.    God curses the ground and not Adam.

5a       God has deemed the earth to be irreparable. Adam’s sin has become a contaminant to creation. Adam was made from the ground and therefore the sin of Adam has polluted the ground.

5b       Before the fall Adam was able to work the ground in the garden to serve God. Now his efforts to work the ground will be a chore and a fight against the decree God has instituted.

5c        Finally the curse will ensure that God will eventually put an end to everything that is contaminated by sin. This is the origin of physical death for everything that comes from the ground: Adam’s body, animal bodies, trees, plants. Only the physical body is cursed. That is why we need a new body upon our resurrection.

The curse is ultimately a blessing for God’s children. Man’s corrupt body will be replaced, and the ground will be replaced too.

 

Limited Atonement

When Adam hears God saying that Woman will bring new life, Adam believed God and renamed his wife Eve, meaning life. Adam is showing proof that he received this word from God and believed it. In this moment we say that Adam becomes a believer by faith in God’s Word. In response to that faith, God demonstrates that forgiveness is available, and He makes Adam and Eve animal skins for clothes. That means that an animal had to die to provide their skins.

 

Limited Atonement was a picture of the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Where before man tried to cover himself by his own work in making leaves, that work was insufficient to provide true covering for sin. But now in faith, Adam has found a true covering. And God provides covering with His own hands. This is the first death recorded in the history of creation. An animal sacrifice is performed to cover the first sin.

 

Man and Woman are sent out of the garden.

This is grace in two ways:

1.     The garden provided the tree that give eternal physical life. God did not want Adam and Eve to live eternally in their sinful bodies. By sending them out of the garden, they will one day die, and this is a good thing for believers.

2.     God did not want Adam, in his sinful state to enter in the presence of God in the garden.

 

God stationed a cherubim with a flaming sword.

This is a reference of the Shechinah glory of God Himself. Before Adam was able to enjoy the presence of God and had direct fellowship with God. Now in his sinful state, there is a barrier, and the angels are guarding the presence of God away from Adam. As long as sin exists in the world, there is no fellowship with God.

It is only Jesus by His blood that cleanse us and allow us to have fellowship again with God. And in the future, we will receive new bodies and we will walk in the presence of Christ.

https://versebyverseministry.org/curriculum/creation