Grace, mercy, and
peace to you from God the Father, who created you, from Jesus Christ, who redeemed
you, and the Holy Spirit, who restored you to life. Amen.
Genesis 3:1-24 Now the serpent was more clever than any
wild animal which the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You
shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat
fruit from the trees of the garden, 3 but not from the
fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. God has said, ‘You shall not eat from
it. You shall not touch it, or else you
will die.’” 4 The
serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die. 5 In fact, God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes
will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was appealing to the eyes, and
that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took some of its fruit and
ate. She gave some also to her husband,
who was with her, and he ate it. 7 The
eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made
coverings for their waists. 8 They
heard the voice of the Lord God, who was walking around
in the garden during the cooler part 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 The
Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 The man said,
“I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I
hid myself.” 11 God
said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I
commanded you not to eat?” 12 The
man said, “The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me fruit from the tree,
and I ate it.” 13 The
Lord God said to the woman, “What have you done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and
I ate.” 14 The Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done
this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every wild
animal. You shall crawl on your belly,
and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put
hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush
his heel. 16 To
the woman he said: I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing. With painful labor you will give birth to
children. Your desire will be for your
husband, but he will rule over you. 17 To
Adam he said: Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree
about which I commanded you, “You shall not eat from it,” the soil is cursed on
account of you. You will eat from it
with painful labor all the days of your life.
18 Thorns and thistles will spring up from the
ground for you, but you will eat the crops of the field. 19 By the sweat of
your face you will eat bread until you return to the soil, for out of it you
were taken. For you are dust, and to
dust you shall return. 20 The
man named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made
clothing of animal skins for Adam and for his wife and clothed them. 22 The Lord God said, “Look, the man has become like one of
us, knowing good and evil. Now, so that
he does not reach out his hand and also take from the Tree of Life and eat and
live forever—” 23 the
Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he
had been taken. 24 So
he drove the man out, and in front of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim
and a flaming sword, which turned in every direction to guard the way to the
Tree of Life. (EHV)
Deception, Disgrace,
Deliverance
Dear friends in Christ,
If you
have ever been a parent to children, or if you have been a child, or if you’ve
ever seen children, (Did I miss anybody?) then you have probably heard things
like “He started it!” or “She hit me first!” or “He hurt my feelings.” Whenever there is trouble in a relationship,
it seems to be our common response to want to blame the other party
involved. Some people may wonder why
this is, or where it began, but our text shows us how this sinful reaction came
to be. In this real-life account of our
first parents, we find the beginning of Deception, Disgrace, and Deliverance.
Because of this incident in the Garden of Eden,
Jesus called Satan the father of lies.
Of course, the devil didn’t come right out with a bold lie to
start. First, he manipulated Eve by
asking her a leading question to get her thinking his way. He asked, "Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from
any tree in the garden’?” Notice
how incredulous the devil sounds. He was
trying to lead Eve into thinking God was unfairly banning Adam and Eve from enjoying
all the good things around them. It was
a false accusation, of course; Satan knew that God had commanded no such thing,
but he managed to get Eve to wonder.
Naively, Eve tried to correct the Accuser, but
the devil was tricky, so he prodded Eve with another lie, "You certainly will not die.”
That time, as in so many things, Satan blatantly denies what God has
declared.
God had given Adam the command not to eat from “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” (Genesis 2:17) as a way for mankind to worship and obey his
Creator. It was the only restriction
placed upon Adam. God gave all the trees
of the Garden for food save this one, withheld only to serve as an altar of
faith in God. And God warned Adam that
the consequence of turning away from his Creator is, and always will be death—a
separation from God.
Of course, in his rebellion, Satan wasn’t
satisfied to just plain lie; he also accused God of being dishonest with Adam
and Eve. He told Eve, falsely, that God
was withholding good things from them. “In
fact, God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you
will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
It sounded so enticing; we can almost feel Eve’s resolve
weakening. Eve was tricked into believing
there was something better than trusting God, so she trusted the devil’s Deception instead.
Deception is the devil’s game—his trademarked tool. He works his deceptions into every part of
this world trying to steal anyone he can away from God. So, what lies does the devil use against us? We may hear things like: “It doesn’t really
matter what you believe.” Or perhaps,
“Well, if God loves you, He wants you to be happy, right?” (Satan uses that one for any perversion he
wants you to try.) How about “Laws were
made to be broken,” or “Who are you to judge me?” Certainly, the lie is still heard, "Has God really said?” filling in
the ending with whatever doctrine is under attack.
We must be on guard and fully expect that Satan
will continue attacking us with his lying questions, because more than
anything, the devil wants us to question God’s Word and God’s love. The devil knows that he loses when we stand
on God’s unchanging Word. Therefore,
Satan attacks our confidence in the Bible, challenges our knowledge of God’s
Word, undermines God’s law, and discredits God’s promise of a Savior. Satan assaults us with accusing questions
like: “Why does God let people go hungry?” “Do you really think you are good enough for
holy God to love?” “Did God really say
you can’t love anyone you want?” “Are
you sure God has truly forgiven you?”
“Do you really believe God died for a sinner like you?” The Deceiver will say anything he can think
of to get you to doubt God’s loving promises.
Beware the liar’s Deception. He does not seek your good.
With his lies, the devil disgraced himself as
an angel, and his lies led Adam and Eve into Disgrace. As soon as they
had eaten the forbidden fruit, they understood the awful consequence of their
actions. The devil had promised they
would know good and evil, but now they knew evil, while the good they had known
before was gone. Now, they trembled in
shame for their evil thoughts and desires.
For the first time, they felt ashamed,
and they felt afraid of God. They could
no longer face their loving Creator, so they tried to hide, first under some
sewn together fig-leaves, and then among the trees of the Garden—but there was
no hiding their Disgrace.
Soon after their sin, The Lord God called to
the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
The Lord certainly knew that Adam and Eve had sinned; He didn’t need
to ask them where they were hiding. Rather,
God was giving them the opportunity to repent, but we see only their Disgrace. Do you wonder why children don’t want to own
up to sin? Because the truth is, none of
us do. In sin, we have become enemies of
God. Therefore, by nature, we both fear
and hate Him. In our shame, we try to
point the finger at others and put the blame for our faults on the actions of
others.
As we look at Adam and Eve’s response to God’s
questions we see they dove even deeper into Disgrace. Adam had neglected
his duty as head of the family by not properly guiding his wife concerning
God’s command, and even though he was with her, he didn’t stop her from
listening to the devil’s deceit, so God questioned Adam first, asking "
Who told you that you were naked? Have
you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?”
Wallowing even deeper in the muck of his sin,
Adam shamefully accused both his Creator and his wife, telling the Lord, “The
woman you gave to be with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate
it.” God gave the woman to
Adam as a blessing and a helpmeet and Adam was to be the head of this new
family. How sad that Adam failed in his
duty to God and to his wife, and still he tries to say, “God, it’s Your fault;
You gave me this woman, and she made me sin.”
Now, Eve does no better, because she blames God,
too, as she accuses the serpent. She
might just as well have said “God, You made this serpent, and he tricked me, so,
yeah, it’s Your fault.” The actions and
the accusations of the first two people on this earth were a Disgrace.
On the other hand, can we honestly say that our
actions are any better? How often could
we be found laying the blame at God’s feet?
Each time we blame someone else for our sins, are we not really placing
the blame on God for not making that other person a perfect individual? And do we, sometimes, lay the blame on God by
thinking, “Well, I’m just doing what everybody does.”? We thus imply that God must be to blame for
making us this way. The truth is
anything other than sincere confession before God for all our sins is to our Disgrace. Trying to put the blame on anything, or
anyone else, is just piling more sin upon our sinful selves.
As we read the text a few moments ago, we were
reminded of the curses God delivered upon the serpent and upon Adam and Eve for
their Disgrace. The devil had told them that they wouldn’t
die, but God hands down the sentence of death they earned. Yes, Adam and Eve would die; meanwhile, their
lives and their children’s’ lives would be tormented by the devastating effects
of the curse of sin on this world. Pain,
sorrow, hard labor, and trouble would all be part of the rest of their days and
for every generation after them. The
Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that every part of our world
suffers because of Adam and Eve’s sin, and that will continue until Christ
returns.
However, in spite of the Deception and Disgrace, God didn’t stop loving His special
creation. Along with their well-deserved
sentence of punishment, God promised Deliverance, and He showed that Deliverance in two ways. We are told, “The Lord God said, ‘Look,
the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, so that he does not reach out his hand
and also take from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever—’the Lord God sent
him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he had been
taken. So he drove the man out, and in
front of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim and a flaming sword, which
turned in every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life.” In this way, first, God showed love to Adam
and Eve; He didn’t want them to foolishly seek to regain eternal life by eating
fruit from the Tree of Life. God’s
immediate Deliverance meant protecting
the human race from having to suffer in this sinful world for the rest of
forever.
There is even better news, though. Even as He delivered the curse, God’s main Deliverance was the promise of a
Savior. God spoke the promise to the
devil, but it was meant for all people to hear.
“The Lord God said to the serpent: ‘Because you
have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every
wild animal. You shall crawl on your
belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the
woman, and between your seed and her seed.
He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.’” In this, God delivered His very
first Gospel promise. Even though man
had sinned, and even though he had blamed God for that sin, God delivers His
great promise of a Savior.
There would be a great battle between the
serpent and this Promised One—the Seed of the woman. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to
see that God was promising Jesus’ birth.
More than that, our Creator promised that Jesus would destroy Satan and
his power to oppose God. Over the coming
centuries, many more prophecies would be given, in line with God’s plan and
time, but here, immediately after the fall, God gave hope to the man and his
wife to carry them through those dark days after banishment from the
Garden. Forever after, that promise has
been passed on from generation to generation, giving hope for the future, and
eternal life instead of death.
Today, these many centuries after Adam and Eve
were laid in the dust of the earth, we enjoy the great opportunity to look back
at the fulfillment of God’s promise. The
same fulfillment to which they looked forward.
Jesus took the fight to the devil when He came into this world to live as
one of us. In Mathew’s Gospel lesson, we
heard of a few incidents of Satan trying to tempt Jesus to sin, but Jesus won
those battles, and every battle with the devil, until the war was over as Jesus
gave up His life on the cross. At the moment
Jesus declared, “It is finished!” the devil’s head was crushed even as
Jesus’ body was placed dead and bruised in the grave.
For each and every one
of us, Jesus had lived in perfect obedience to all of God’s will and
Law. And for each and every one of us,
Jesus paid the price of death for our sins.
Yet, the battle was not lost, for He rose to life, again, so that we
also could live eternally through faith in Him.
Dear Christian friends, Jesus won that eternal
war, and life has been secured for you and me and for all who will believe in
Christ as their Savior. Turn away from Deception and Disgrace, and put your every hope and confidence in Jesus, because
Jesus paid the penalty for every sin, for every time we have pointed our
fingers at someone else, for every time we fail to confess, and even for our
blaming of God for our sins and troubles.
Jesus paid the price without blaming anyone else for the sins that were
put on Him. He suffered the punishment
of death without complaint.
With His life on earth and with His innocent
death on the cross, God and Mary’s Son won the war against Satan. Then, by the work of the Holy Spirit, the
Lord has you washed clean of all sin as you were brought to faith in Him. Because the devil brought Deception, we and all people suffered Disgrace. Yet, by God’s grace, we
can celebrate and sing praise to God forever, because Jesus has accomplished
everything necessary for our salvation, for He has become our Deliverance. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto everlasting
life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment