God Judges the Guilty

GOD JUDGES THE GUILTY

An Exposition of Genesis 3:8-24

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: March 13, 2022

Series: The Book of Genesis

Note: Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Good morning. I invite you to turn to Genesis 3. Before I read verses 8-24, I just want to make a brief comment. Some of you will recall the context of this comment, if you were here for last week's message. Every time we come to God's Word, the fundamental question that confronts us is: Will we trust God's assessment? Will we trust God's counsel? Will we trust His Word? Or are we going to subject Scripture to our scrutiny? Are we going to stand in judgment over Scripture? Are we going to assume that we know better? That's the fundamental question. And I just encourage all of us, as we come to God's Word today, to come with the heart attitude that I am submitting myself to God's judgments, God's assessments, God's words, because only His Word will give us life.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

Holy Scripture says:

⁸ And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” ¹¹ He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” ¹² The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” ¹³ Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

¹⁴ The LORD God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
    cursed are you above all livestock
    and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
    and dust you shall eat
    all the days of your life.
¹⁵ I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
    but he shall rule over you.”

¹⁷ And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
¹⁸ thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

²⁰ The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. ²¹ And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

²² Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” ²³ therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴ He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:8-24)

This is God's Word and it is for our good. Let's pray.

Father, we need your help. Father, our hearts are prone to wander, our sinful hearts are prone to dismiss or minimize or reject the clear teaching of your Word. Father, I pray that you would come and, as we sang, that you would give your Word success that your Word would dwell deeply in our hearts, that we would submit our own hearts and minds to your judgments and to your will, and that we would be transformed. We pray for your Holy Spirit to be actively at work as we contemplate your Word. In Jesus’ name, amen.

GOD CONFRONTS REBELLIOUS MAN AND WOMAN (v. 8-13)

Let's get right into it. In verses 8-13, God confronts the now sinful man and woman. We were created for loving and joyful fellowship with the Lord. The tragedy of sin is that sin breaks apart that fellowship. Part of the creature’s healthy fellowship with the Creator is that the creature must honor the Creator’s authority. But sin is rebellion, and sin brings guilt and shame, and sin undermines peace with God and results in conflict with God.

For some time after Adam and Eve were created, they enjoyed fellowship with God. On an ordinary day in sinless Eden, Adam and his wife would have welcomed the presence of the Lord, and perhaps they would have walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day, but this didn’t happen on the day described in Genesis 3. They had broken faith. They had violated God's instruction. Instead of being humble creatures, they decided to make a play for God-like powers, and then guilt and shame descended upon them. Now they wanted to hide from the Lord God who had made them and loved them. The most natural thing for a sinless person to do is to rejoice in the presence of the Lord. But the most natural thing for a sinful person to do is to retreat from the presence of the Lord. As the Apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 3: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:10-11) Since no one seeks for God, it is a very good thing that God seeks out us.

So, the man and his wife, now being sinful, seek to hide from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Now you may wish to hide from God, but if God wants to find you, He will. He knows where you are, and he knows how to draw you out of hiding. Although the passage that I read is a very sobering passage, don't miss the fact that God does not say, ‘I'm done with the two of you.’ God doesn't leave them in their guilt-laden, shame-ridden hiding and helpless selves. Instead, God addresses them, he calls out to them. He calls them out of hiding. He seeks to continue to be in relationship with them. So, although the judgment is unmistakable and there is certainly a judgment tone to this passage, the grace is also unmistakable. Don't miss that.

God confronts the man (v. 9-12)

“Where are you?” the Lord God calls out to the man (v. 9). Of course, the Lord knows where Adam is, and the Lord knows why Adam is where he is. The Lord's question is not aimed at information but at relationship, at transparent conversation, at the opportunity for confession and repentance. “Where are you?” is a very good question, isn't it? I wonder if the Lord would impress upon any of you this morning this very question: Where are you? Not your physical location, not your GPS coordinates, but your spiritual location. Where are you? Are you in the place where God has placed you? And are you doing in that place what God has given you to do, or have you turned away? God placed Adam in the garden in order to keep the garden and to care for his wife. And Adam is still in the garden, but on his watch both the garden and his marriage have been ransacked by a snake. What has happened on your watch, man? What is going on in your heart? Where are you?

In verses 10-12, Adam is willing to answer God's questions. He answers these questions in a very matter-of-fact way, but you don't get the sense that Adam is experiencing brokenhearted contrition or eager-hearted repentance at this point. Adam says: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (v. 10) Fair enough. It's interesting though, isn't it, that Adam claims to be naked? Adam wasn't completely naked, was he? He had clothed himself with fig leaves sown together as a loincloth. But the failure of the loincloth to make Adam feel clothed in the presence of God is a way of saying that our own attempts to cover our nakedness don't succeed in the presence of the One before whom everything is laid bare. In reality, Adam was still naked in the presence of God ­– Adam was exposed, ashamed, guilty and afraid.

The next question comes in verse 11: God said to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Of course, God knows exactly what Adam has done. But again, he is inviting Adam into conversation and repentance. But notice that instead of focusing on his own disobedience, Adam focuses on external circumstances. He focuses on what others have done in his answer in verse 12: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” The emphasis is on the woman, on the God who made the woman, and on what the woman has done. Adam is putting maximal emphasis on what others have done, and minimal emphasis on what he has done. It’s as if he is saying, ‘I'm the victim here! Can't you see these circumstances are piling up against me?’ There's an important lesson to learn here. The most important thing about you is not what is happening outside of you. It's not what other people are doing. It's what's going on inside of you and particularly your own heart responsiveness to the Lord and to His instruction.

And so, Adam plays the blame game. And by the way, this is the beginning of all ugly relationships. You can take it right down to the level of husband and wife, or you can look at it in terms of a local congregation, or you can look at all of the ‘wonderful relationship techniques’ that we see displayed in politics through the media. People are primarily focused on what other people have done. That is the problem. We're always shifting blame onto others, and this results in a relationally toxic culture. Do you want a relationally healthy culture? Don't play the blame game, minimize the responsibility of others, and maximize your own responsibility before God and seek to walk in repentance. When you do that, believe it or not, you will have more grace for others.

God confronts the woman (v. 13)

After confronting the man in verses 9-12, God turns to the woman: “Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”” (v. 13) Now the Lord is inviting her into conversation and repentance. She answers, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (v. 13) Her answer bears some similarity to Adam’s. She immediately directs attention to the serpent's activity. Nevertheless, she does acknowledge that she was deceived. And being deceived in a matter about which God has given instruction is morally blameworthy. In fact, Paul confirms that “the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning” (2 Corinthians 11:3). So the woman's answer is slightly better than the man's, but there's definitely no brokenhearted repentance that has come out of their hearts at this point.

GOD IMPOSES PENALTIES ON THE ONES WHO REBELLED (v. 14-19)

After the initial confrontation, God imposes penalties on the serpent, the woman and the man, in verses 14-19. I want you to notice a general pattern to these penalties. God imposes penalties – first on the serpent, and then on the woman, and then on the man – and in very general terms these penalties bear a similar pattern. In these penalties there is a hardship penalty imposed on each guilty party. And then there is a conflict penalty imposed on each guilty party. And so, as we walk through these verses, I'm going to call attention to the hardship penalty, and then I'm going to call attention to the conflict penalty. And you'll also notice as we go through this that the punishment fits the criminal. Now we're familiar with the concept of the punishment fitting the crime. And certainly the punishment fits the crime of high treason against the Lord God Almighty. Any punishment that he gave us would be fitting. We are worthy of death on account of our sin. But I'm going to call attention to the fact that God's punishments are actually very fitting for the criminal – for the particular villain, traitor, rebel that he is imposing a penalty upon.

God penalizes the serpent (v. 14-15)

Let's begin with God's imposition of a penalty on the serpent (v. 14-15). Keep in mind that the serpent in Genesis 3 is an actual animal serpent that has been hijacked by the devil. The first penalty – the hardship penalty – applies to the animal serpent; the second penalty – the conflict penalty – applies to the devil.

The serpent’s hardship penalty

First, look at the hardship penalty in verse 14: “The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.”” In this penalty, God strikes at the serpent's pride. In Genesis 3:1 we were told that “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field”. In terms of craftiness and shrewdness, the serpent was on top. But no more! Now the serpent is going to the bottom. Now the serpent is cursed “above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field”. Why do snakes slither on their bellies? This is why. We may assume that God originally designed serpents to stand and move upright as a very majestic and exalted creature. But now, because of their unwitting complicity in the rebellion, they are struck down to the ground and their pride is turned to humiliation.

The serpent’s conflict penalty

Second, we come to the conflict penalty in verse 15. In the rebellion, the serpent deceived the woman, drew the woman into the lie, attempted to get the woman onto his team, attempted to turn God's good order upside down, and attempted to become the serpent-king over the earth. Now God says to the devil, who had hijacked the serpent: You will not succeed. Yes, you will have some partial success. You will have offspring and you will do some bruising, but you will ultimately fail. And your head will be fatally bruised. Let me read verse 15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Remember, this is a penalty on Satan. It is good news for the woman and it is good news for human beings, but the Lord is speaking to the serpent and it is bad news for that ancient serpent, the devil. You attempted to get the woman on to your team, but I will put enmity between you and the woman, and this enmity between you and the woman will be extended into enmity between your offspring (or your seed) and her offspring (or her seed). Now I think there are a couple of things going on here.

This word “offspring” is singular, and we understand the very individual battle that is presented at the end of verse 15, where the seed of the woman is bruising the head of the serpent, whereas the serpent is bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. There is this individual conflict in which we understand that the seed of the woman is ultimately referring to the Messiah. This is the first promise of the Messiah – that there will be at some time in the future a male descendant of the woman who will rise up as the great serpent-crusher and deal the serpent a death blow. And so, this is the first explicit mention of the Gospel.

But all of us, including you and me, are caught up in this battle. What God is assuring Satan of is that there is going to be a long history of conflict – a spiritual conflict – between the people that the serpent co-opts onto his team and the woman, with the woman in verse 15 representing someone who is a recipient of God's grace. God is graciously separating her and putting her on the other side – the opposite side – of the serpent. And now you have these two humanities: on the one hand you have humanity that is operating under the serpent and the serpent's lies, and on the other hand you have humanity that is operating under the grace of God. We see this conflict unfold in the Book of Genesis and throughout the entire Bible.

For example, in the very next chapter, we're going to learn about Cain and Abel. When the apostle John – in 1 John 3 – is reflecting on Genesis 4, he understands that Cain is “of the evil one” (1 John 3:12), that Cain is a child of the devil, spiritually speaking. Jesus applied the same terminology to the corrupt religious leaders, saying “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). And it's interesting that in Revelation 12, which I preached from a few years ago, this whole conflict is unfolded for us. And Revelation 12:17 says, “Then the dragon [another reference to that ancient serpent, the devil] became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Revelation 12:17) And it is interesting to consider that even though Jesus dealt the decisive blow to the power of Satan at the cross, nevertheless the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (Romans 16:20) Isn't it a wonderful gift of grace, that the Lord Jesus Christ has won the victory, and in that victory he has ordained that his bride will get to put her feet on the snake and crush the snake?

So the serpent is going to be frustrated and ultimately he is going to lose, but he is going to cause a lot of heartache, a lot of trouble, a lot of persecution, a lot of division along the way.

God penalizes the woman (v. 16)

Now in verse 16 God imposes penalties on the woman.

The woman’s hardship penalty

Let's first look at the hardship penalty. The woman was created to be a giver and nurturer of life. This encompasses the entirety of the woman's life, but it is especially evident in her role as bearer of children. In the rebellion, the woman was deceived and became a facilitator of death. Now, by God's grace, the woman will still bear children – as was evident in verse 15 and is stated clearly in verse 16 – the woman will still bear children and will still nurture life, but henceforth she will experience much sorrow and pain in connection with childbearing. I am unsure whether this specific penalty is meant to include such things as infertility, miscarriage, infant mortality, and maternal mortality – all of which are obviously a part of this fallen world in which we live. But the definite focus of the hardship penalty is that delivering children into this world is going to be painful. Now this is obviously not a good time for men to say, ‘I know what this is like’, so let me share a quote from a medically and theologically trained woman named Mary Kassian, who writes this:

“Childbirth is painful. I had read about it and believed it before the birth of my first child, yet nothing could have prepared me for the intense agony of labor. Labor pain is simply inexplicable to one who has not experienced it. Dr. Ronald Melzack, a leading expert in the field of pain, has recently completed research on the intensity of labor pain. He found that, on average, labor pain ranks among the severest. According to his study, it may be exceeded only by the suffering of some terminal cancer patients and often is worse than having a finger amputated without anaesthetic. It is difficult to imagine a relatively pain-free birth process; however, this is what the Creator had in mind prior to the Fall. Thus, the first part of the judgment on woman decreed physical and mental pain as well as emotional grief and turmoil in childbearing.”[1]

Bringing forth children from this point forward is going to bring the body, heart, and mind of a woman to the breaking point.

The woman’s conflict penalty

Now let's go to the second half of verse 16, which reveals the conflict penalty. In the serpent's conflict penalty in verse 15, God put enmity between the serpent and the woman, which is fitting because the serpent had sought to trick the woman into becoming a serpent follower. And God basically says to the serpent: No! Now in the woman's conflict penalty in verse 16, God puts conflict between the woman and her husband, which is fitting because in the fall earlier in Chapter 3, the woman had abandoned her proper role as helper to the man and instead she took the lead and persuaded her husband to join her in obedience to the serpent. And now God says, in the second half of verse 16: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” The idea is that you will continue to make efforts to usurp your husband's authority, but he shall rule over you. The phrase “[your] desire shall be contrary to your husband” – which can also be translated ‘your desire shall be toward or foryour husband’ – is a bit challenging to understand. It is theoretically possible, in terms of what the word means, that it could refer to romantic desire. But it doesn't have to refer to romantic desire, and it really doesn't make sense in this context. What makes sense in the context of the fall, where God is imposing penalties that fit the crime and the particular criminal, is that there is going to be relational conflict now between Adam and Eve. Let me show you something from Genesis 4:7, where this same word is used and, because of the close proximity between Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7, this seems very helpful and enlightening in terms of understanding Genesis 3:16. In Genesis 4:7, God is speaking to Cain and he says in the latter part of verse 7: “… sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” The same phraseology is used: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband” (3:16) and “[Sin’s] desire is contrary to you” (4:7). In Genesis 4:7 God is telling Cain: sin desires to have you, to control you, to master you, but you must master it, you must rule over it. With similar phraseology, Genesis 3:16 says, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

The Bible's instruction for the man to lead the home and also to exercise leadership in the church and in the world, is not based primarily on Genesis 3:16. In fact, Genesis 3:16 is not a command to the man. Rather, Genesis 3:16 is a promise of frustration for the woman that, as a fitting consequence for her sin, she is going to experience frustration in her marriage. Genesis 3:16 is a statement of fact: just as it is certain that the woman's male descendant will crush the head of the serpent, and just as it is certain that the man shall return to the dust, so it is also certain that the husband will rule over his wife, which will be very frustrating to a wife who wants to be in charge. Whether the husband's rule is constructive or destructive depends on other factors, and that's beyond the scope of this verse. But I would have you know that there's nothing inherently negative about the word translated “rule” here in verse 16. It's not as if it automatically refers to despotic and totalitarian rule. The same word is used to describe how the sun and the moon rule over the day and the night. The same word is used to describe Joseph ruling over the land of Egypt. So, down through the corridor of time, the man shall rule his wife.

God penalizes the man (v. 17-19)

Finally, we come to the penalties imposed on the man in verses 17-19.

But before God announces the penalties on the man, God calls attention to the man's sin. Remember, as head of the human race, the man bears a special responsibility for the sinking of the ship. And the beginning of verse 17, God says: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’” – and this sin of the man forms the basis of the punishment that he receives. Adam exchanged the authority of God's voice for the authority of a creature’s voice – in this case, his wife's voice. Adam contravened a direct order that he had received from the Creator, and for his insubordination he receives at least two penalties in verses 17-19.

The man’s hardship penalty

In Adam’s case, the hardship penalty and the conflict penalty are almost inseparable, but not quite. The hardship penalty, in the middle of verse 17, is actually placed where? It is placed on the ground – on the earth – although this will directly and significantly and negatively impact the man's life. God says: “cursed is the ground because of you”. Now this penalty fits the criminal perfectly, as can be seen by remembering the man's assignment in Genesis 2. The man was created out of dust from the ground, and he was assigned to work the ground. Do you remember? Specifically, the man was stationed as the steward of the garden and he was commissioned “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). It was Adam’s privilege to work a blessed earth that would be cooperative, that would be agreeable to Adam’s management, that would yield up all kinds of good fruit. No weeds, no blights, no pests, no droughts, no floods, no hail storms, no bombs. Adam got to manage and develop a very good earth with no built-in hindrances to his work. But with the hardship penalty, God basically says to Adam: No more! Many years ago, I heard someone put it this way: When man rebelled against God, God caused the ground to rebel against the man. Man acted against God's authority; henceforth the earth will act against man's authority.

When in Romans 8 the Apostle Paul was reflecting back on Genesis 3, he describes it in phrases like this: “the creation was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20); the creation is in “bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21); “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22). The world is broken. The physical creation, ecosystems, weather patterns, soil quality, the animal world, the microscopic world – it's all shot through with corruption now. Why? This is why: because Prince Adam abandoned his proper role as obedient servant to the High King of heaven, and chose to esteem his wife's voice over and against God's voice. And so now, Prince Adam’s earthly realm is afflicted with a curse. Now Prince Adam would have to honestly say: ‘Welcome to my accursed realm. This is my doing. I'm responsible for this. My sin invited this judgment from the Most High God.’ All this means that mankind's great dominion mandate to subdue the earth is now going to be exceedingly difficult, labor intensive, and costly.

The man’s conflict penalty

The conflict penalty on Adam – on the man – is found in the rest of verses 17 to 19. The hardship penalty of a cursed earth rolls right into the conflict penalty, which is that Adam will experience pain and frustration in his attempt to win bread from the earth. Adam is tasked to work the ground, and this work will be exhausting, back-breaking, and strenuous. Verse 17: “in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life”. Verse 18: “thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you”.  Verse 19: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”. We need to understand, from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, that work is good. Work in and of itself is inherently good. But frustrating, painstaking work with all kinds of hindrances and setbacks is the consequence of Adam's sin. Men, work that wears you out, breaks you down, presents a barrage of obstacles, yields a small return for your efforts, makes you want to give up – this is the conflict penalty that God imposed upon the first man and upon every man that follows in his steps. In this conflict with the cursed ground, you will experience some partial success, won't you? “[You] shall eat” (verse 17). “[You] shall eat the plants of the field” (verse 18). “[You] shall eat bread” (verse 19). There is God-ordained provision, but obtaining it is going to be a sweaty and costly endeavor.

Even though man will experience partial success in his earthly labors, in the end man will return to the ground: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken” (v. 19). This “return to the ground” was not inevitable. Even though man was made from dust of the earth, he was also made in God's image. And the plan was for the man to prove faithful as God's image bearer and to live forever and to be a bright reflection of God's heavenly glory. But instead, Adam proved unfaithful, and so now he is destined to descend back to the earthy dust from which he came: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (v. 19)

These judgments apply to the entire human race for all of history

As I've hinted at, these judgments were not only for the man and the woman and the serpent in that immediate context, but they apply to the entirety of the human race and to all of human history. This is the world that our precious little ones – and little ones here at SPBC include Charlie, Titus, Nehemiah, Abe, Grace, Marion, and Elijah – this is the world that our precious little ones are born into. It is a cursed, conflict-laden, sorrowful, painful, stressful, spiritually dangerous world with the long shadow of death cast over the whole lot. You and they will need a lot of grace in order to navigate, survive, and possibly discover joy in this heartbreaking and back-breaking world.

God demonstrates grace to the man and his wife (v. 20-21)

Let's move to verses 20-21, where God demonstrates grace to the man and his wife. The very fact that God has not written Adam and his wife out of the story, the very fact that God has not consigned Adam and his wife to immediate physical death, provides the backdrop to verse 20. The woman will live and be a life-giver, a child-bearer – and so much so that in due course, one of her male descendants will deal a death blow to the serpent. The man also will live and work the ground and, with his wife, will have children and grandchildren, and they will enjoy meals around the dinner table. All grace. Therefore, Adam leans into God's overture of grace, and gives his wife a name that is worthy of God's promise of life: Eve. “The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” There is a play on words here: I have a footnote for verse 20 in my English Standard Version, which says, “Evesounds like the Hebrew for life-giver and resembles the word for living”. Eve, life, life-giver – she didn't have any sons or daughters yet, but Adam believed. Adam exercised a measure of faith in the course that God was charting for them, and he gave his wife a fitting name. And as Jonathan Safarti mentioned in relation to Genesis 1:28, Adam’s comment in Genesis 3:20 expresses his intent to walk in obedience to the Lord and, with his wife, “to multiply and fill the earth”.[2] Adam exercises faith in response to the grace of God.

And then, in verse 21, God clothes Adam and Eve. A number of years ago I was reading a book, and this thought from the book stuck with me about how after Adam and Eve sinned and after we sin also, you can't go back to the way it was before you sinned – you can never go back. Adam and Eve cannot go back to unashamed nakedness in paradise. They can't go back. That will never be ever again. You can only go forward. And the only way to go forward now is to be clothed.[3] But our attempts to clothe ourselves, not speaking mainly now in terms of physical apparel, but instead to the attempt to cover our shame, to atone for our sin, to compensate for our deficiencies, to make ourselves presentable in the sight of others, and even more so to think to ourselves that we are somehow presentable in the sight of God – our own fig leaves and loin cloths will never suffice to cover our guilt and shame. God alone is able to cover our guilt and shame, and he graciously does so for Adam and Eve. He graciously clothed them, and the reference to garments of skins almost certainly refers to animal hide. And thus, there was the first sacrifice out of which God made clothing to cover the guilt of the first man and the first woman.

The gospel, promised and pictured, in Genesis 3

And so, we can see how verse 15 and verse 21 come together ultimately in our Lord Jesus Christ. God sent forth His Son, the Messiah, to crush the head of the serpent. And how did he crush the head of the serpent? By getting his own heel bruised. By suffering and death upon the cross. By dying for our sins in order to make atonement for our sins and cleanse our hearts, so that his own God-pleasing obedience and righteousness would be imputed to us and would cover us and make us presentable in the sight of God. That is the gospel promised in Genesis 3:15 and pictured in Genesis 3:21.

God expels the man from the garden (v. 22-24)

Finally, moving to the final three verses – verses 22-24 – God expels the man from the garden and prevents access to the tree of life. Now this is a mercy and a judgment.

Mercy

It is a mercy, because the man has become his own ungodly arbiter of right and wrong. He has decided to take the law into his own hands, and now he is shot through with corruption. He has no capacity to do a good job of making the rules, because he was made to live under God's judgments and God's standards, but now he's wicked and sinful. And he's going to take a lot of wrong steps. There's going to be a lot of wrong steps between Genesis 3 and Revelation 21. Can you imagine living forever physically in this morally and spiritually filthy world? And God basically says: that’s not going to happen! He already said that we're going to die. But the tree of life was of such a quality that the fruit from that tree actually had the ability, under God's appointment and design, to impart everlasting physical life. So God saw to it that they would never partake of that fruit until his own people are glorified in Revelation 22. So there's mercy here, but there's also the judgement that you can't miss.

Judgment

The garden was the man's first home; now he’s evicted. The garden was his first workplace; now he’s fired. The garden was the first temple, where the man met with God; now he’s kicked out from garden paradise in God's blessed presence and exiled to a cursed wilderness world with thistles and thorns. And so, if you have ever had the feeling that you are spiritually homeless, that you've been demoted from your proper and high calling as a human being, and that God is far away, you are accurately feeling the implications of verse 24, when God kicked the first man out of the garden. Think about how Adam might have felt at the end of this expulsion. Adam was the one who was supposed to keep the garden, and now he had to swallow the bitter pill that the task of keeping the garden was reassigned to someone else. Adam, you've lost your charge, you didn't keep the garden from that crafty snake, and so now you're out, you're not going back in, and I will appoint my heavenly emissaries – “the cherubim and a flaming sword” – “to guard the way to the tree of life” (v. 24).

THREE LESSONS

Let me briefly mention three lessons to take away from this passage.

God intends us to feel the consequences of our rebellion

Lesson number one: God intends us to feel the consequences of our rebellion. These are not abstract and remote judgments that we feel every once in a while. God is not playing around. He intends you to feel the consequences of sin and the reality of his judgment in your everyday life: work is frustrating and painful; marriage is frustrating and conflict-ridden; childbearing is painful. Eight billion people in this world, eight billion deliveries of children into this world, all continual reminders of our fall into sin. Marriages all over the place. Even today many will experience exactly this kind of frustration, and how many people are always complaining about how their work isn't working out so well. Our call to do the great dominion mandate in Genesis 1:28 – that's where God hits us, right? “God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion”” (Genesis 1:28). But that blessing seems to be in the rearview mirror now, and now it's a sinful couple that has to manage and negotiate their own relational tensions that's called upon to be fruitful and multiply. “I will surely multiply pain in your childbearing”. The man and woman will seek to subdue the earth, but the earth not going to be cooperative. What's the proper response to this? Not resentment. Not bitterness. Not protest. But to humbly recognize your need for grace. God's judgments are true. God's judgments are right. And if you still have breath, God intends the word of His judgment to be for your good. God invites you – not to shift blame onto others and certainly not on God, but – to come into the light, to turn away from sin and to trust him for His grace.

Genesis 3 explains the full scope of our problems

Lesson number two: Genesis 3 explains the full scope of our problems. I remember learning this through the writings of Francis Schaeffer 20 years ago, and when I learned these things it was like lightning – in a good way – like lightning just going off in my head. It was like, ‘Wow! This is so helpful to see how this explains the world that we live in.’ There is spiritual conflict: there is broken fellowship between man and God. There is also spiritual and relational conflict in terms of the Serpent and his followers being in opposition to and persecuting the Messiah and his followers. And then there is further relational conflict right down at the level of marriage between a man and his wife, and then when we turn to Genesis 4, we will see conflict between the two brothers, Cain and Abel. There is also psychological conflict: guilt and shame and the desire to hide. And there is also environmental conflict: the earth is not cooperative – it is difficult to subdue and often works against our very best plans. Genesis 3 explains the world as it is, the world that we live in.

Only God can save us

The third and most important lesson: Only God can save us. We look for our fig leaves and loin cloths. We try to clean up our outward behavior. Some people think: ‘Marriage will save me’ or ‘Having children will save me’ or ‘Work will save me’. So many people find their identity in their family or in their work – and those are good things, of course, but they will not save you. A number of years ago I heard a preacher say something that's very obvious, but I hadn’t really seen it before. He said something like, ‘Don't miss the obvious: man's work will not save him.’ Yeah, that's right here in the text, isn't it? And after all this frustration, late in life we're going to die. The death rate is holding steady at 100% (except for Enoch and Elijah). And then you're going to stand in judgment before the Holy One. We can't save ourselves. Only God is able to save us. And the good news of Genesis 3 is that he hasn't written us off. Instead, through the promise of the woman's seed and the righteousness that he will provide, he has made a way for us to be restored to fellowship with him.

Let me close with this. In the words of Frederick Lehman:

“The love of God is greater far / Than tongue or pen can never tell,

It goes beyond the highest star / And reaches to the lowest hell;

The guilty pair, bowed down with care, / God gave his Son to win:

His erring child He reconciled / And pardoned from his sin.”[4]

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that we would not kick against the fact that now we live in a cursed, judged, frustrating world. I pray that our response to that would not be anger or bitterness, but that it would be humility. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I pray that we would humble ourselves under your mighty hand and declare that every word of God is true and that every Judgment of God is just, and that each and every one of us would return to you through the glorious way that you have appointed: the death and resurrection of your very own Son. In His name we pray, amen. 

ENDNOTES

[1] Quoted in Jonathan D. Safarti, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Second Edition. Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2015: p. 368.

[2] Jonathan D. Safarti, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Second Edition. Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2015: p. 390.

[3] D. A. Carson, The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010: p. 35.

[4] From the hymn “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman