The Fall of Man

Genesis 3
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, December 05, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gregory Broderick

The topic today is the Fall of man.  We recently began our study of the book of Genesis, and this is the fourth in what will surely be a long series from a long book.  Though the book of Genesis is cast off by some as a mythical origin story, or by others, even so-called Christians, as irrelevant or outmoded, the book of Genesis is fundamental.  If you do not understand the truth and importance of the book of Genesis, you cannot properly understand anything.

The book of Genesis contains the first principles from which everything else proceeds.  In just the first three chapters, we have the three most important events in history:  Creation, Fall, and Redemption (Creation in chapters 1 and 2; Fall in chapter 3; and even the foreshadowing of Redemption in chapter 3).  These are the critical things that matter both in eternity and in this life.  If you get them wrong, you will be off course in all of your thinking and in all of your actions.  Your views will be distorted in everything because you are not dealing in reality.  You could very well argue that the first three words of Genesis, Elōhim bārā bereshit, “In the beginning God created,” are the most important three words ever spoken or ever written.  Whether you accept them or reject them will set your course in this life and for eternity.

Over the last month or so, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Wassermann have set forth the original state of being that acts as the backdrop for Genesis 3.  We saw in chapters 1 and 2 how infinite and everlasting triune God created the world, not out of need, but rather out of an expression of His perfect glory and love.  He made everything, from the land and the sea to the fish and the birds and the plants, culminating in the crown jewel of his creation—mankind.  He created man and woman in His own image and likeness.  These are the only beings so described:  in His own likeness.  And He set them over the rest of His creation to care for it, to govern it, to fill the earth, and to subdue it, to bring order to His creation.

God established an order.  The man Adam was to act as the head—God’s delegated authority over all His creation, and his job was to work the creation and to care for it (Gen. 2:15).  And God created woman, the perfectly suited helper to assist the man Adam in his task and to counsel him as to how to do it.  Together, the two becoming one flesh; they would take care of God’s creation and they would develop it as God told them to do.  And it was all good.  This is the refrain of Genesis 1:  “And God saw that it was good.”  Indeed, Genesis 1:31 says that it was very good.

So this was the perfect human life.  The perfect human existence is described in Genesis 1 and 2.  Perfect and intimate fellowship with God in the cool of the day.  Perfect and perfectly joyful obedience to God—no divide, no grumbling, no bad attitude.  It was all happy obedience.  Perfectly harmonious relationship between man and wife.  No domestic disagreements of any kind.  Yes, there was work to do in that garden, but it was pleasant and fruitful and sweet labor, not the frustrating toil and scarcity that most of mankind has since known.  There was probably even harmony between man and all the animals.  No viruses or illnesses are recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, as well as no mourning, no crying, no pain, no tyranny, no theft.  There was just man’s benevolent rule as God’s viceroy over all creation, and man’s rule with pure motives, purely for God’s purposes.  In short, it was a life that we do not know and cannot comprehend.  It is totally outside of our experience.  We cannot even imagine it due to our own warped nature.  This was essentially heaven on earth.  The best that we can do in this life is a warped imitation, and that is pretty pleasant at times.  It has its moments.  But it bears no real relationship to this reality that existed in the garden, which was essentially perfection all the time.

So I ask you:  What happened?  Mankind had it all.  Everything perfectly good and great.  Why don’t we experience that today?  Why is there poverty and domestic violence all around us today?  Why is there theft and burglary and drug addiction?  Why are there half a million homicides worldwide every year?  We are going to hear in Genesis 4 about a homicide.  It was a shocking thing.  That happens 500,000 times every year.

Why are there 40–50 million abortions worldwide every year?  Twenty-five percent of all pregnancies end in abortion, and they say seventy-five percent of those are by married women.  That is more than one per second.  It is about three every two seconds worldwide.  In fact, in the six or seven minutes that I have been talking to you here, more abortions have occurred than people who are sitting in this room right now.  Think about that, and just picture that in seven minutes, everyone in this room has been wiped out.

This is indeed a sharp contrast to “It was all very good.”  So what happened and what changed?  What changed is Genesis 3:  the Fall of man.  Sin entered the world.  The difference between their world and our world is the presence and effect of sin.  It is not too dramatic to say that the events recorded in Genesis 3 are the worst thing to ever happen.  It is the source of every bad thing that has ever happened—the root cause of all evil that we experience.  Every genocidal action by Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Genghis Khan, or Pol Pot has its origins here in Genesis 3.  Every theft, assault, rape, domestic violence, and child molestation has its origin here in Genesis 3.  Every sickness and death has its origins here in Genesis 3.  Every frustration, disappointment, or argument has its origins here.  It is no exaggeration.  This was the worst day ever.  It explains how we went from “It was all very good” at the end of chapter 1 to Genesis 6:5, just a few chapters ahead, describing man as one whom “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

Yet even among the darkness, even on this worst day of days, a ray of light and a ray of hope shines forth—the protoeuangelion, the first gospel, the good news, the foreshadowing of what would later come.  For though man threw it all away, God made a way to be saved.  A man-proofed way, a devil-proofed way—a God-guaranteed way to be saved.  And in time, He fulfilled that in Christ Jesus and made it available to everyone by faith.

So even as we mourn our paradise lost this morning, we take comfort and we have a great hope—the hope of paradise restored by the atoning sacrifice of the God-man Jesus Christ.

The Fall of Man

Let us look first at this day of days, the Fall of man.  The Fall of man occurred simply because man sinned.  Sin, if you are not aware, is the violation of God’s law.  The Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 14 sums it up as “Lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.”  That is found in Galatians 3:10 and 1 John 3:4.

As the sovereign Creator of the world, God has the right and authority to make its rules, and He made rules for it.  The rules are not a consequence of the sin.  Perhaps the proliferation of rules and certainly the violation of the rules is the consequence of sin, but there were rules, there was law, in the garden before the Fall.  There were all kinds of rules in the garden.

In Genesis 1:6 God separated the land, the sea, and the sky, and set boundaries for them that they were not to cross.  That is a rule.  He made the sun and the moon and set them in their courses.  That is a law.  The physical laws of gravity and so on are operating in the garden.  God created the fish and other creatures and told them to be fruitful and multiply.  That is a rule.  That is a command.  God set man over creation to rule it (Gen. 1:28).  You cannot rule without rules.  So there were rules in the garden.  In fact, God made man and woman and gave them a rule for how to live—both of them, made in His image and likeness, both of them as one flesh and one unit, but with the husband as the head and the wife as his helpmeet, the helper fit or suitable for him.

God ordered man to work and take care of the garden.  That is a rule.  There was family order.  “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).  So there are all kinds of rules that we see in the garden.  Of course, we do not have an exhaustive description of everything that happened in the garden.  We do not have an exhaustive description of every rule either.  There were likely lots of other rules in the garden that we do not know anything about.  There was surely worship of God in the garden, and I am willing to bet there were rules for that.

My point here is that rules are not the result of sin just like work is not the result of sin.  There was work in the garden before the Fall.  Rules existed before sin, and these rules are a reflection of God’s nature, for God is a God of order.  Paradise is not chaos.  Paradise is not autonomy, everyone making his own rules.  Paradise is the keeping of God’s perfect order out of a joyful heart and having perfect fellowship with God.  Think about that, teenagers.

But man broke God’s law, plunging us all into our current situation.  The key law, for the purposes of today, is found in Genesis 2:16–17:  “And the Lord commanded the man”—see the law—“‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’” So God gave the rule, and God gave the consequence.

This is as clear a command as there is—any tree except—and a severe penalty just to make it clear, just to leave the impression that this is a serious rule.  It is clear on top of that that Adam understood the rule.  He did not eat of the tree until Genesis 3, so he obviously understood that he was not supposed to do that.  And either he told the rule to Eve or God told it to Eve.  But either way, Eve knew the rule too because she repeats it in Genesis 3:3.

So they both knew it, they both understood it, but they violated it anyway.  In Genesis 3:6, she ate, he ate, and this is the worst moment in history.  God’s curse came upon Adam because of this act, this violation of God’s law.  In Genesis 3:17 God says, “Because you ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it .  .  .’” There is no mystery about why the curse happened.  God gave the reason:  “You ate of the tree of which I said you must not eat of it.”

The list of curses meted out on Adam here tracks our own experience:  “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it” (Gen. 3:17), or “By the sweat of your brow you will eat of it” (Gen. 3:19).  This has literally been true for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of human existence.  Now, most of us here do not scratch out a subsistence living from the ground, but most of the world does, and most of the world certainly has for human history.  This is also true, by the way, in our little white-collar bubble.  I practiced law for a long time, and I can tell you that it was painful toil.

The woman was also cursed.  In Genesis 3:16 God says that he will greatly increase her pain in childbearing.  Relationships were cursed.  Before, the two were one flesh and they operated as a harmonious unit.  But now we see in Genesis 3:16, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”  There is disunity in the relationship.  There is disconsonance in the relationship.  There is a power struggle in the relationship.  Gone is God’s good order.

We actually even saw that before God announced that curse.  We saw it earlier in the chapter.  The man blames his wife.  When God comes to the garden and is asking what happened, Adam says, “That woman whom you put here with me—you see, it is her fault.”  That is in chapter 3:12.  “It is her fault.”  And he also says it was God’s fault.  It is not Adam’s fault.  It is everyone else’s fault except for Adam.  Before, there was none of this finger-pointing, but now we see it.  In chapter 3, verse 13, the woman says to God, “That creature did it.”  She blames the serpent.  “He deceived me.  It is not my fault; it is his fault.”  We see the disunity.  There is disunity and disorder where previously there was peace and harmony, and those very problems continue to this day.

In Genesis 3:23–24 there is a further curse.  Man is expelled from the very good garden creation, and he is separated from God.  A flaming sword is posted at the entrance to the garden.

All these curses came because they sinned, and what a mess.  All because of sin, all because of rebellion against God.  And it is important to keep coming back to it.  Before, there were no problems at all.  I am emphasizing this because it is totally outside of our experience.  But there were no problems.  There was certainly no sin before this.  No sin is recorded, and it is positively stated.  In Romans 5:12, it tells us that sin entered the world through one man, through Adam.  It tells us that death came through sin, a clear reference to Genesis 3.  So this is the origin point of sin.

The expulsion and kicking out of the garden was and remains a just punishment.  So perhaps you are sitting there thinking, “This punishment seems a little bit excessive in relation to the crime.  It is just some fruit, after all.  What is the big deal?” You could not be more mistaken if that is your view.

First, you must understand that the punishment is exactly proportional to the crime.  God is infinite and infinitely holy (Rev. 1:8; Isa. 6:3, and so on).  Our sin, all sin, is ultimately against Him only (Ps. 51:4).  So any sin logically is thus infinite.  God is infinite; any sin against Him is infinite.  And the only just punishment for infinite sin against infinite God is an infinite penalty—infinite and eternal hell (2 Thess. 1:9).  So you must recognize that the only just punishment for this sin or any sin is infinite because that sin is against infinite God.

Beyond that, though, we have to recognize the full depth of their sin here.  They did not merely eat some fruit.  Firstly, recognize this was an intentional, thoughtful, and premeditated sin.  This was not an accident.  They meant to go to this tree, but they accidentally grabbed the fruit off that tree.  That would still be sin.  But it was not carelessness.  In fact, Eve repeats the rule that God gave to Adam in Genesis 3:3 in considering whether to eat from the tree.  They knew exactly what they were doing.  And beyond that, Adam is right there with her.  Genesis 3:6 says her husband was with her.  So they were both there and they both contemplated what they were about to do, understood that it was wrong and violated God’s law, and went ahead and did it anyway.  This was an intentional and premeditated sin.

On top of that, we get from the context that they were not in some big hurry.  They were having a leisurely conversation with the serpent.  Moreover, they have an abundance of alternative food in the garden (Gen. 3:2).  There are all kinds of trees there for them to eat from.  They have tons of time.  They could have stopped and said, “We are confused.  We are not sure.  We are going to ask God later when He comes in the cool of the day.”  Or perhaps they could have even called on God in that moment.  But they did not do it.  All those advantages they had, all those offramps from this sin they had.  But they did it anyway.  And I want to emphasize there is a deeper wickedness in violating God’s commands knowingly, and that is what they did (Heb. 10:26; Num. 15:27).  So it was intentional, thoughtful, and premeditated.

Secondly, recognize the underlying sin of distrust of God.  That is what led to the outward sin of defiance of his commands.  You see, our outward sins are almost always the result of some inward sin.  They are not a stand-alone problem of action but proceed from an inward problem.  James 1:14–15 lays out the progression.  “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”  It is the same progression that we see here operating in the garden.  They have a desire, and they are tempted by their own evil desire for the forbidden.  They are enticed:  dragged away and enticed by the devil.  Then there is sin action—that desire has conceived and given birth to sin.  And then there is death.  Sin gives birth to death.  It is the same progression.

Beneath the sinful activity of taking and eating when they knew they were not supposed to, though, there is a disturbing reality.  Eve and Adam buy into the devil’s lie that “God is holding you back, that God is keeping you down.”  The devil says, “You will not surely die.  The God who said, ‘You will surely die’—that God is lying to you to scare you and to hold you back.  You could be just like him; in fact, maybe even a little bit better than him.”   In Genesis 3:5 the devil says, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened.”  God told them, “When you eat of it, you will surely die.”  But the devil says, “No, no.  He knows that your eyes will be opened.  You see, God is keeping your eyes closed.  God is keeping you in the dark.  You will be like God.  He is holding you down.  He is holding you back.  You could be so much more than you are.  You could be so much happier than you are in this perfect garden.  You could know good and evil.  And the idea is not just that you would become aware of good and evil; but the idea is that you can make your own rules.  You can make your own right and wrong, your own good and evil, your own morality and reality without reference to God.”  Sounds familiar.

The temptation here is to nothing less than autonomy.  That is what the devil is offering them.  It is all a lie, of course.  God made them very good, and they had everything good.  We just talked about it.  They were already as like God as they could be, made in His image and likeness.  They did not need to improve on themselves in any way.  And, notice, despite what the devil told them, they did not get to be autonomous as a result.  They became instead slaves to sin and slaves to the devil.  And, lo and behold, they did surely die, just as God said they would.

My point here is not just that the devil deceived them.  It is what he does.  He is a liar and the father of lies.  My point here is that the devil’s deception worked because they bought into it.  They bought into his unstated premise that “God is not for you.  God is not doing things for your good and for your best.  God will not give you righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  God will not work all things together for your good.”  Verse 1 says the devil was craftier, or more subtle (KJV), than all the other creatures.  He never comes out and says, “God is against you.”  But it is there.  It is underlying every claim that he is making here.

It is a damnable accusation that they made and believed against God.  They impugned the very character of God—His nature and His core.  God had formed them in love with His own hands.  He had made them in His own image and likeness.  He had given them a glorious purpose:  to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.  He gave them the very good creation with all they needed, and He even gave them one another—a head and a helpmeet, a perfect match.

Beyond that, He gave them His very self, fellowshipping with them in apparently physical form in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8).  God gave them the best, but they accused Him of the worst.  They distrusted Him.  Their sin of distrusting and accusing God is damnable indeed.  And it is deserving of the maximum punishment.  It is why they believed the devil’s lie that “You will not surely die.”  It is why they believed the devil’s claim that “You will be like God.”  They either internally had a distrust of God, or the devil sowed it into them.  But either way, the devil capitalized on it and spun it up until it gave it birth to sin and death.  And they let him do it.

The third thing we need to see about this sin, to see its enormity, is that we must see the rebellion in it.  It is not merely intentional and accusatory of God, but it is rebellion.  There is a distinct brashness and contumacy to their actions.  They ate the fruit primarily to defy God.  It is an in-your-face moment.  God said, “Don’t eat the fruit.”  And they said, “Yeah, watch this.  I am going to eat the fruit.”

They do not appear to have been hungry or in need of food.  The Bible is silent on that either way.  There was certainly plenty to eat in the garden.  Genesis 3:9 covers that also.  There does not appear to have been even anything even especially great about this fruit from a culinary perspective.  Now you might be thinking, “Wait a minute.  Genesis 3:6 says Eve saw that the fruit of this tree ‘was good for food and pleasing to the eye.’”  That is true.  But go back to Genesis 2:9.  It says there was a lot of fruit like that.  It says, “And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the garden—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.”  So this is not a unique property of this tree.

What, then, was so special about this tree?  There were lots of other trees that were good and pleasing to the eye with their fruit.  There were lots of other fruits that were good for food.  What was so special about this tree?  What made it special is that God said, “Don’t.”  Sin rises up in us and says, “Do” when God says, “Don’t.”  Our Pastor has used in the past an example that you see a sign that says, “No spitting,” and instantly you want to spit.  Or we could say, “Don’t walk on the grass,” if you want to be more genteel.  This is enmity.  It is in all of us now due to the fall, but apparently the roots of it were in them too.  Unlike us, they had a choice.  We became slaves to sin, as I will explain later, but they were not yet slaves to sin.  They were what we call posse non peccare (possible not to sin).

Like the Lord Jesus in the desert, they could have chosen to say, “No.”  They could have chosen to say, “It is written,” or at least, “It is spoken.”  They could have chosen to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.  You are lying, and I know you are lying because you are telling me the opposite of what God said, and God is trustworthy.”  They could have done that, but they did not.  They chose to do otherwise.  They chose the short-term pleasure of sin for some tasty fruit.  They rebelled against God, and they fell, and they plunged all of us—the whole world—into sin.  That is why we are the way that we are.  That is why we see the way we see and we live how we live.  That is why it is not “very good” anymore.

The Consequences of the Fall

In short, it is all bad.  As I noted earlier, every bad thing that has ever happened has its origin in this encounter in Genesis 3.  For Adam and Eve, the consequences were immediate, long-lasting, and, on top of that, severe.  They were cursed in labor of any kind—man’s labor in the fields, the woman’s labor in childbirth.  They were expelled from God’s very good garden (Gen. 3:23).  There was disunity and separation from God.  (GTB)  We will see in chapter 4 that sacrifice is now required for them to go and to see God.  Covering is now required.  It was not required before, but it is apparently required now.  There is disunity in their marriage (Gen. 3:16).  Previously, they were one but now, there is a struggle.  Soon we will see one son murders another son (Gen. 4).  Great, great sorrow—one son murders another.  Those are the immediate consequences for Adam and Eve.

Consequences also exist for all mankind, and they are serious as well.  We have disunity with one another.  We live the Cain-and-Abel life every day.  We have separation from God as a species.  There is a defacing and a warping of our very nature.  They were made in the image and likeness of God, but that was marred by their sin.  The image and likeness of God is still in us, but it is defaced now.  It is graffitied now.  It is warped now.

Adam and Eve had a choice to sin or not to sin (posse non peccare), but due to the fall, we are all born with a sin nature.  That image and likeness is marred, and we are born with a sin nature, so we choose only to sin, sin, sin all the time.  That is how they went from “very good” to “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5).

Even when unregenerate man does not want to sin, he still sins (Rom. 7:21 and following).  Due to this sin nature, due to the taint of original sin placed upon us by Adam and Eve, we are born damned.  Every human is born damned from the beginning, and then all of us go on to sin in our actual lives.  So we are born with a sin nature; then, over the course of our lives, the sin nature issues in sins that we actually commit.  We are born sinners, steeped in sin, practicing sin daily.  That is the description of mankind.  If you do not believe me, just go out beyond those gates and look around.

We are restrained as a species only by common grace.  This is the remnant image and likeness of God that is still in every person, although seemingly less and less restrained day by day.  We should have inherited the very good life that they had.  We should have inherited the very good garden, the unity, the harmony with God, the harmony with God’s people, the harmony with God’s creation.  But instead we inherited trouble, loss, pain, and frustration in this life.  And worse than that, we inherited a destiny of eternal hell for our sin—both our original sin and our actual or personal or particular sins that we commit.

It is all bad.  This is as bad as it gets.  Eternal torment and agony forever without end is our just destiny.  The wrath of God for eternity without end is our just destiny.  It is described in Luke 16—torment and agony every day, with a great chasm separating us from God so that we can never cross from that side to God’s presence.

All have sinned, due to our sin nature, and the wages of sin is death, eternal death.  Second Thessalonians 1:9 says it is everlasting destruction.  This is truth.  This is not some myth.  This is not some metaphor.  To the degree that metaphor or hyperbole is used, it is because we cannot describe the full awfulness of it.  To the degree that we use analogy and metaphor, it is because we undershoot it every time.  We cannot describe the infinite awfulness of infinite and eternal hell.

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, had it all.  They had the glory and the grace.  They had the unity, the peace, and the love.  They had the happiness and the purpose and the perfect fulfillment of living out their God-given purpose every day.  They had no problem, no disagreement, no trouble, no sorrow.  They had life the way it was intended, the life that is truly life.  It was glorious.  It was joy unspeakable and full of glory all day and every day, especially in the cool of the day when God would come and walk with them.  They had all of that and they threw it all away.  They threw it all away for themselves, and they threw it all away for each of us.

How did they throw it all away?  They tried to improve on God’s order.  They tried to improve on God’s creation.  They tried to improve on God’s perfection which, by definition, we cannot do.  And in so doing, they plunged the whole world into sin.  They destined every person for hell.  Difficulty in this life, but worse than that, eternal hell—difficulty in the life to come.  Even the very creation is subjected to frustration and groans because of their actions, because they brought sin into the world (Rom. 8:18–22).

And I ask you, for what?  What did they gain?  What did they seek to gain from this?  The temporary pleasures of sin for a season?  A little fruit?  What did they hope to gain?  Whatever that was, they did not gain it.  It was all loss.  Those are the consequences of the Fall.

The Solution for the Fall

It is all very bleak.  I told you this was literally the worst thing that has ever occurred.  But even in this dark, dark moment, our good and gracious God shines forth a bright ray of hope showing the way to life.

Recall that they had treated God with utter contempt, openly defying His commands and living contrary to His established order and accusing Him of evil, saying, “He is against me.”  And yet, despite all that, God still shows His lovingkindness to them.  First, He shows love to them by coming to the garden.  He is omniscient.  He did not need to come there on a fact-finding mission.  He already knew what they did when they did it.  He is omnipresent and omniscient (1 John 3:20).  He did not need to investigate or find out.  And yet he comes.  He could have just cut them off, but He comes (Gen. 3:8).  He does not destroy them from far off.  He does not simply cut them off and abandon them.  He comes.  God loves His people, and He comes.  He comes to them in love, even when they have done evil.  Notice, it is God who seeks them out.  They did not run to God and say, “We did something bad and we did not know what to do.”  It is God who seeks them out.  In Genesis 3:9 He asks, “Where are you?” He is not calling them because He does not know where they are.  He is calling them, “Come to me.”

Second, He confronts them in love.  He asks, “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Gen. 3:11).  He knew the answers to these questions, but He asks them anyway.  You see, man had a serious problem at this point.  He was separated from God, literally hiding in the trees, hiding from God.  But hiding would not solve that problem of separation from God; it would only exacerbate the problem.  Only dealing with our sin can solve the separation from God.  So God comes, and He comes to deal with it.  He confronts them in their sin.  He does not leave them alone in their sin, praise the Lord.

Third, we see God’s love in that He makes provision for them.  They had sewed together what our Pastor has called the “fig-leaf contraption.”  This was man’s solution.  Not very effective, not very durable, and certainly not very comfortable.  But God gave a greater provision.  God came and gave them “garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21).  God’s provision is a superior solution every time.

Notice here the tender and personal care that God shows for them.  They had just defied Him and treated him with contempt.  But He comes and provides clothes for them.  Whether He sewed them with His own hand or spoke a word—it does not say—but He personally got involved and personally came and tenderly provided these better coverings for them.

Fourth, He promises them food and children.  He could have just cut them off or at least abandoned them and left them to fend for themselves in the fallen world that they had made.  But God did not do that.  Yes, food would be harder to get.  Painful toil. Sweat of the brow.  It was going to be more difficult, unlike the fruitful garden, where the fruit was yielded easily.  So, yes, food would be harder to get.  Yes, it would hurt to have children.  God said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing.”  But the silver lining is that they would still have food.  They would still have children.  Food and children are great blessings from God, and yet God did not take away that promise entirely.

Even God’s most vociferous enemies benefit from such things by common grace.  God “sends rain on the righteous and the wicked” (Matt. 5:45).  They benefit from God’s common grace in restraint.  Yes, man is totally depraved, but he is not maximally depraved—not yet, anyway.  So God comes and provides for them food and children, a hope and a future.

Finally, and most importantly, God promises them a way out of the mess that they made, a way out of the eternal hell that they and we each deserve.  In Genesis 3:15, the protoeuangelion, the first good news, in speaking to the devil, God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”  As would become clear over the next several thousand years and through the progressive revelation of the Holy Scriptures, this is none other than the promise of the Messiah, the promise of Jesus Christ.  Very God who would become man, who would live in perfect obedience to God unlike them and unlike us.  Who would bear all of God’s wrath in our place on the terrible, wonderful cross.  Who would die the death that we deserve for our sins.  And who would be raised for our justification to show that He never sinned, to show that the whole price was paid (Tetelestai, that it was finished), that it was paid in full by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Genesis 3:15 is the first light of that promise to them in their dark hour.  God is saying, “I have made a way.  I have a plan to save you and your offspring.”  In the fullness of time, God carried out that plan.  He always keeps His promises.  And He is still carrying out that plan today in our time.  By His grace, salvation is still available today.  His Holy Spirit is still applying it to the hearts of God’s chosen people as His word is preached today.  God follows the same formula.

We, like Adam and Eve, have sinned and treated Him with contempt.  We have denied and despised and rejected Him.  Indeed, Genesis 6:5 is true of us also, that every inclination of the thoughts of our hearts were only evil all the time.  We, like Adam and Eve, were not seeking Him out.  We were hiding from Him among the trees in our fig-leaf pants of money or culture or philosophy or false gods or atheism or whatever other thing we put our trust in—hiding in the idea that there is no God.  The fig-leaf contraption in our day is that everything came from nothing for no reason and with no cause in the absence of matter.  Talk about a fig-leaf contraption to solve the problem!

But there we were—without hope and without God and without interest in God.  Yet, as He came to them, He came to us.  He called to us, saying, “Where are you?  What have you done?” And like His care for Adam and Eve, his care for us is tender, loving, and personal.  For them, he provided clothing of animal skins.  For us, he sent his own Son, infinite God, the only one who could pay the infinite price.  Jesus paid it all—the full blast of the full wrath of God, all to make a way of salvation and fellowship with God for us sinners.

Some people think that God instituted the sacrificial system with the animals He used for skins.  Whether He did that or not at that time in Genesis 3, He instituted for us a sacrifice that was effective to solve the whole problem—the infinite, perfect blood of Christ.  God did for us what we could not do.  He took all of our sin and placed it on Christ.  He took all of Christ’s righteousness and placed it on us.  This is the double transaction.  He made a way to be saved.  He made the only way to be saved.

Like them, we did not deserve anything from God except judgment.  Like them, we did not know what to do.  Like them, we did not even ask, but we hid from God.  Yet He did all and he did it all by grace.  What great love and rich mercy the Father has shown to us!

Conclusion

What can we do about it?   First, see that you too are a sinner.  Like Adam and Eve, we have violated God’s commands for our lives, even though He gave us everything we needed.  See that you are a sinner, both by nature and by practice, and that you too owe an infinite debt.  Grapple with the reality that we, like them, deserve to be forever banished from God’s presence, the presence of blessing, and to be sentenced to eternal hell for our rebellion, forever separated from God by that great chasm, by the flaming sword.

In other words, my first counsel to you is:  See reality.  God created all.  Man rebelled and threw it all away.  We all sinned personally, and we owe a debt that we cannot repay.  See that reality and interpret reality correctly.  Our problems are not the result of capitalism or communism or politics or psychology or poverty or whatever else.  They are due to our sin nature, to our sin, and to the noetic effect of sin in the world.  Reject the devil’s lie that he does not exist, that God does not exist, and that everything is random.  Reject the devil’s lie that there are no consequences for our sins because there is really no such thing as sin because there is really no God anyway.  See that reality and see that we all either exist or existed in that reality before we came to Christ.

The second thing to do about it:  See that there is a way out.  God promised a way to them, and God delivered it to us in Jesus Christ, the only Savior who crushes the head of the devil.  This is the only way.  Jesus himself said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  As the apostle Peter boldly proclaimed in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

See that God provided a way out.  We did not deserve it, but God provided one way out.  Take hold of that way.  Take hold of the one way by faith.  Trust in Jesus Christ alone and in nothing else.  God offers this salvation, this way out.  He offers it to all people, but only by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  Abandon your reliance on anything else—on your supposed intelligence, your money, your good deeds, your race, your church attendance, or the idea that “I was born in the church, so I am not like those sinners out in the world.”  These are all lies of the devil.  None of those things will save.  None of those things can save.  Trust in Christ and his saving work alone.  It is the only way to be saved.

This is really nothing more than an exhortation to live according to reality.  Confess Christ as Savior.  Obey him as Lord.  If you see that reality that I mentioned earlier, if you see your sin and if you see that Christ is the only way to be saved, you will cry out to Him, you will trust in Him, and you will call upon Him in faith.  He will move in you to cause you to do it (Ezek. 36:27).

Finally, resist the devil, and especially his lies.  See him for what he is:  a liar and the father of lies, a roaring lion prowling around, looking for someone to destroy and devour.  Reject the devil’s lie that opposes God’s word.  God said, “You will surely die.”  The devil said, “You will not surely die.”  Who was right in the end?  They died.  Reject the devil’s lie, “You will be like God.”  They were already like God, and did they become more like God?  No, they became like the devil—not autonomous, making their own good and their own evil—but twisted and rejected.  They became slaves to sin.  In fact, what they became was “like devil,” not “like God.”

Reject the devil’s lie that God is against you and that God is holding you back.  This is counsel for all people, but it is especially counsel for people who have confessed Christ as Lord and Savior.  It is especially counsel for young people who have grown up in the church, who do not know what the rest of the world is like.  God is not against us.  God is for us.  He gave us everything we need and more, just like Adam and Eve.  We cannot have their very good, very perfect life, but at least in this place we have a pretty good life.  God gives us everything we need and more.  He made us.  He gave us life (Heb. 1:3).  He gives us food and rain and shelter and reasonable minds to understand.  He sent Christ to save us when we were dead, when we were His enemies, when we were without hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2).

As He did with Adam and Eve, God in mercy and in love confronted us in our sin.  He did not simply abandon us and leave us to our own devices.  For those who have confessed Him, He moved in our hearts by the Holy Spirit to save us.  You see, we were just like them.  We were not looking.  We were hiding among the trees.  We were there in our fig-leaf contraptions.  We were pretending, “I am okay, and you are okay.”  But God came along and said, “You are not okay.”  And He moved in us to save us.  He showed His tender loving care to us as He did to them—first, in paying the highest price in the precious blood of Christ, but, second, in coming to us personally.  Just as He made their garments for them, He moved individually in our hearts to regenerate us.  He removed our hearts of stone and replaced them with hearts of flesh.  He put His Spirit in us to move us to live for Him.  And right now, He can move in your heart, unbeliever.  He offers you the same thing, unbeliever.  He gave us good.  He gave us Christians lives of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Do not ever believe the devil’s lie that God is against you.  God is for you.  And if He is for us, who can stand against us?  The answer is, no one.  Not the world, not the flesh, and not the devil.

Let us do all these things, let us see all these things, and let us rejoice in all these things.  Let us live lives of thankful and joyful obedience.  Let us live for Him who died for us.  Yes, Genesis 3 records the worst day ever—the sin and the Fall.  But it also records the best day ever too—the promise from God to save His people from their sins, a promise that He fulfilled in time by the person and work of Christ, a promise that He fulfills in each of His people born again of the Holy Spirit.  Let us make sure that it is true for each one of us, that our sins are forgiven in Christ, and that we are destined for eternal life with God in the cool of the day.  And then let us give God all the glory. Amen.