Main Scripture: Genesis 3:8-24
• Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect, complementarian union with one another – without conflict or difficulty, without pain or hardship.
• They had been placed in the Garden, planted perfectly by God for them to explore and enjoy its wonders. There was no weed, no pestilence, no famine, no fear, no worry, no hardship, and no pain.
• They were able to be in God’s presence without shame and able to commune with Him. They personally knew the all-powerful God who spoke and all of creation became exactly as He said. They could relate with the most satisfying, fully enjoyable and completing God – the One in whom there is everything that they needed for life.
• Their bodies would never decay and they did not know death.
• They had work that was completely fulfilling and yet without pain or hardship. The earth submitted to them and they were given authority over it – they needed nothing and yet had all of the positive challenges and opportunities that they could want.
• God was completely and only good and faithful, kind and loving to them.
• Yet, Adam chose to disregard, disbelieve and disobey this only good, true and faithful God.
• Adam & Eve presumed to know better than God and rejected all of the unmitigated perfections and goodness of God for that which seemed best to them. They listened to a serpent, to Satan, instead of God who had made them and lavished His goodness on them so richly and profusely.
• Because of who God is and who God made Adam and Eve to be and because of God’s unlimited goodness, kindness and love towards them, the sin of Adam and Eve was very serious and required the judgment of God on all of mankind.
• God could not overlook their sin because He is just. But God does not deny His mercy even in judgment.
Main Idea: God calls sinners to give account and declares His justice along with Hope of His Grace
• Although God is just and must punish sin, even in the midst of the declarations of judgment, He is merciful and He limits their judgment.
1. God calls sinners to confess their sins.
• The first thing that Adam and Eve did when they realized they were naked and then heard the sound of God’s presence in the garden was try to hide.
• There is no running or hiding from God - even though we pretend and we ignore God at times when we’ve sinned, acting like if we ignore Him long enough, He won’t really be there.
Psalm 139:2-4,7-8 "You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether… Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!"
• God mercifully sought out Adam and called to him. God gave man every chance to say where he was and confess his sin. He didn’t accuse and He didn’t force – He extended grace to Adam.
• The King of all, modeled justice in making an inquiry before bringing judgment.
[God is calling you to] “come out of your hiding place, from your self-reproach, your covering, your secrecy, your self-torment, from your vain remorse.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Instead of coming to God contritely, Adam shifted blame to both God and the woman. There was no godly sorrow and no true repentance.
• The woman was deceived because she listened to the serpent instead of listening to God. She was deceived because she gave into desires to be like God. She was deceived because she doubted God’s goodness.
• The woman then shifted blame to the serpent.
• We too are tempted to blame-shift and often our blame-shifting includes an element of truth.
“the decrees pronounced by the Lord God mentioned here are not exclusively punishments; they are also, and chiefly, measures taken for the good of the human species in its new situation.” – Umberto Cassuto
2. God declared the consequence of pain in a woman’s labor.
• Both giving birth and the task of mothering or bringing up children would be fraught with pain.
• In the midst of the wonderful blessing of child-bearing and the intimate experience of child birth, women will experience pain as a constant reminder of sin and our need for redemption.
3. God declared the consequence of conflict in the marriage relationship
• No longer would husband and wife work together in harmony functioning in a perfectly complementarian way, now this very closest of human relationships and all human relationships will be marked by discord and disunity, conflict and pain.
The woman’s desire would be for / in opposition to her husband
• The phrase your desire shall be for your husband has the same words and structure in Hebrew as later when God curses Cain and says in Genesis 4:7 that “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
• In Eve’s relationship with Adam, part of the curse is that she would want to take his role – to be against him.
• Apart from God redeeming marriage – marriage will be cursed by a struggle of the roles between the man and the woman.
• The woman would be against her husband – she would be tempted for the role of a husband herself
• The two fundamental roles of a woman as a wife and mother would not satisfy as they were meant to and the grace of God was seen in the fact that this ongoing pain in life would point her to God Himself.
• Apart from Christ’s redeeming work, something in the heart of every woman will not desire to work with their husbands but there will be a natural tendency against him.
The man would rule over her (harsh domination)
• The man would be naturally inclined to domineer or rule over the wife in a sinful manner.
• Adam would rule over her – in the sense of dominate. Unfortunately, this is the root of the awful sin of male domination which has caused so many problems and ills in society.
• This is why women bristle under male leadership at times, because it often has come with an ungodly, satanic desire to dominate, to rule over women.
• That is why the Apostle Paul says to live with our wives in an understanding way.
• We are to live in a way that takes into account who women are and the God-glorifying differences. To live in an understanding way means to appreciate and uphold the intrinsic worth and value of woman as an image bearer of God; to understand their unique and noble role and to respond and treat them with gentleness and respect.
• This is why we men are commanded to love our wives like Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.
4. God declared the consequence of pain in a man’s labor
• As a result of the fall, instead of finding only satisfaction and fulfillment through a sense of accomplishment in work, work will be marked by pain at every turn.
• Work itself was not cursed – but God cursed the ground. Now, whenever Adam tried to do what God had made and blessed him to do, he would encounter painful toil.
“God’s judgment on the man is the most comprehensive. In creation he (and Eve) had been given dominion over the earth and all the other creatures. Now this dominion is challenged on every hand by the earth itself. The rebel against legitimate rule receives some of his own medicine and experiences rebellion against his own legitimate rule. The curse on the ground is in fact a curse on Adam. The king of the earth has now no obedient servant in the soil. The freedom to eat of all the trees in the garden is replaced by the struggle to get the earth to yield the necessary daily bread. Weeds flourish where food-yielding plants grow with difficulty. The end of man is to nourish the earth by returning to the dust from whence he came.” -Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan
The earth was cursed because of man
• All of the earth was cursed because of Adam and subjected to futility, not functioning as God originally intended. Earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornados, drought, famine, blights, are all a direct result of the sin of Adam
Romans 8:20-22 “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
Work would be painful
• Man will eat but he will eat in pain now. His body will be weakened and it will be painful to work.
• They would now have to eat from cultivating land, instead of eating from the garden that God had planted. Previously vegetation and fruits sprang up and grew on their own as God commanded, now it would require hard work for them to grow. Instead of crops, thorns and thistles would grow where they did not want them and choke out their plantings where they did want.
• This isn’t limited to agriculture though; this is symbolic of all types of work, which will now be difficult. We will face physical opposition in our bodies, we will face opposition and difficulty in our work structures and we will face practical difficulties in working.
5. God declared the consequence of death
• Instead of the ground submitting to Adam, it will eventually swallow him up again
• Man was originally designed to live forever, yet the first Adam sinned and lost the ability to live forever. Death will surely come for us all and we live in the reality that death may come at any moment for any one of us.
6. God declared the hope of His Grace
• Although the earth groans under a curse now, God was merciful in not completely removing beauty – we can still experience a reminder of the beauty of God and a reminder that He intends us to live in a perfect world with Him once again.
• Although Adam & Eve have been ejected from the Garden, we see the grace and mercy of God that they will still eat and be fed by God.
• Man is given a blessing by not living forever in his sin and the effects of the curse.
• God clothes man’s nakedness, both covering his shame and showing man the seriousness of sin by killing animals to make clothes for them.
• God shows man that in the very beginning, a sacrifice had to be made for sin – blood had to be spilled. Sin was so serious that it required a penalty be paid.
• God was merciful to not kill man immediately and He killed an animal instead – paving the way for the Mosaic law and the sacrificial system and pointing the way to Christ, who alone can clothe us and permanently cover our nakedness
God promises offspring.
• The promise of His grace was that although they would one day die, they would still experience the blessing of children. And their children would have children and their race would continue.
• After God addresses them and pronounces these curses, Adam turns to his wife and names her “Eve” in response to God’s decrees.
• This scripture seems to indicate that Adam understood the glimmer of hope that God had spoken to them in the midst of the curses and he names his wife “Eve”, which sounds like the Hebrew for “life” or “life-giver”.
God promises deliverance through one born into humanity
• When God drove man out of the garden He placed the cherubim to stand in guard of the garden. Adam & Eve could not come into God’s presence – they could no longer reach God or be in fellowship with Him on their own accord. Only God could tell the Cherubim to stand aside.
• Ironically, in God’s words to the serpent, God brought the first glimpse of the hope of the gospel to mankind.
“after man’s fall into sin, the God of all creation graciously bound Himself to man again by committing Himself to redeem a people to Himself from lost humanity.” -O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of The Covenants
• Later, when God instructed His people to build a tabernacle, He had them divide it into a place where the people could enter and then a more holy place where only the priests could enter to perform sacrifices.
• This Holy Place contained the Ark of the Covenant, which represented and uniquely contained in some measure the presence of God on the earth.
• There hung a curtain, several layers thick, which blocked passage to the Holy Place and all external view of the Holy Place.
• Over the Ark of the Covenant itself were two cherubim, symbolically guarding the presence of God and on the curtain itself was embroidered images of Cherubim, to remind people of their separation from God and their inability to approach Him, except carefully on His terms for fear of death.
• But, when Christ breathed His last and declared “it is finished” this temple curtain with the image of the cherubim, was ripped in two by God’s own hand, declaring that now man could come into God’s presence freely again, through the sacrifice of Christ.
• Now, God dwells with men again and desires to make Himself known to us and has torn down the wall of separation between us. He has provided Jesus as the way that we can have free access to Him once again and walk in relationship with Him.
• Mankind has been given access to eat of the tree of life again - through Christ we can have eternal life. Symbolically, the Cross which was an instrument of death and everyone who hung on it was cursed, became for us the tree of life.
• In light of the New Testament, we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has become flesh and dwelt or literally tabernacled among us.
• Jesus referred to Himself as the fulfillment of the temple when He said that if they destroyed this temple, He would raise it up again in three days.
• Jesus’s own body was the temple and He was both God’s presence incarnate and the way for all men to come into God’s presence again.
Hebrews 6:19-20 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever
Potential Application Questions:
1. How can we see the mercy of God in calling to Adam and Eve after they had sinned and giving them a chance to respond?
2. How has God show us mercy in our own lives personally by calling us to come to Him and repent?
3. Where are you tempted to hide from God or His people when you sin? How can we respond to God’s calling to us to confess even now?
4. How can pain in bringing forth children point you to God?
5. How should pain in your work/labor point you to God? How does pain in your own work experience function for you personally? Do you turn to God seeking redemption and help or do you complain and resent God?
6. Ladies – where do you see a tendency to take on your husbands role of Biblical leadership in the home? How would God have you repent and change?
7. Men – where do you see a tendency in your life to abdicate leadership or to be harsh and domineering in your leadership? How would God have you repent and change?
8. How does knowing we have free access to the “tree of life” and unlimited access to the presence of God through Jesus Christ change things for us now?
9. How can you specifically cultivate hope in the gospel to redeem your work, your parenting and your relationships?
