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Good morning, I'm Constance St. Clair and I'm a member of the Christ Church Youth Group.
Today's reading is from the book of Genesis, chapter 2, verses 15 through 17, and chapter 3, verse 1 through 24.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
And the Lord God commanded the man,
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 if you eat from it, you will certainly die.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman,
Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
The woman said to the serpent,
We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say,
You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.
You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman.
For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of it and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord God called to the man, Where are you?
He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.
And he said, Who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
The man said, The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.
Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done?
The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you among all livestock and all wild animals.
You will crawl on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
And 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.
To the woman he said, I will make your pains and childbearing very severe.
With painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you,
you must not eat from it.
Cursed is the ground because of you.
Through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken.
For dust you are, and to dust you will return.
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
And the Lord God said, The man has now become like one of us, knowing the good and evil.
He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.
So the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
The grass withers and the flowers fade.
The Lord for God is forever.
Good morning, Christ Church.
We asked the question last week, where did everything come from?
And we considered our massive universe that we live in.
We considered the magnificent bodies that we inhabit.
And I wanted to follow up on that with two quotes this morning.
The first is from Jeffrey Marcy.
He was a professor of astronomy here at UC Berkeley.
And this is, he's describing the planets in our solar system.
He says this,
They're all in the same plane.
They're all going around in the same direction.
It's perfect, you know.
It's gorgeous.
It's almost uncanny.
The second quote is from Freeman Dyson.
He was a theoretical physicist and mathematician who taught at Cornell and Princeton.
And he said this, he said,
And this fits really well with what we're talking about in Genesis 1 to 2 that reveals this absolute yet personal creator God who made everything out of nothing.
Many of the pioneers of modern science, multiple winners of Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry and physiology and medicine have found Christianity to be a fruitful context in which to carry out their research.
Cambridge University has a physics laboratory, the Cavendish Laboratory.
And over the entrance to that laboratory are written the words of Psalm 111 that says,
The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all of them that have pleasure therein.
And at Harvard University, at Emerson Hall, the philosophy department meets in Emerson Hall.
It has the words of Psalm 8 engraved in stone above the entrance.
It says,
What is man that thou art mindful of him?
And that's what we've been talking about.
What an honor it is to be made in the image of God.
What an honor it is to be the creation of God.
What an honor it is to have been given this task to rule over creation and to turn creation into a temple where everything and everyone is serving the Lord and praising Him.
And yet, despite this incredibly high calling and the dignity that's been bestowed upon us,
most people agree that something's off.
Something is not right.
It's not the way that it's supposed to be.
We feel it in ourselves.
We feel it in our culture.
We can describe many of the symptoms of our misery with relative ease,
but we find it harder to agree on a diagnosis of the underlying cause.
You know, what the disease, what the disorder actually is.
Many social commentators that you can read about pretty much on a daily basis are going to talk to you about restlessness.
You know, the sense of stress and overwhelm that people feel.
They'll talk about psychological ill health and the rise of anxiety and depression.
They'll talk about the culture of fear that is increasing year over year.
They'll talk about being polarized and our uncivil public discourse.
Identity politics, racism, the growth of the extreme right and the extreme left,
the breakdown of community, the erosion of ethical standards and basic morality,
increasing self-oriented materialism,
and the widening inequalities in our economy that result from that.
And I'm sure you could add on many, many more that you've read about.
But the question we want to ask today is,
does our problem boil down to a political problem?
Or to an economic problem?
Or to a social problem?
Or is there something deeper?
Is there something more basic, more personal, more spiritual and relational?
And that's what I want to explore here in Genesis chapter 3.
I want to talk about living between commands and schemes.
Secondly, I want to talk about living as fallen creatures.
And thirdly, about living in the hope of paradise regained.
So living between commands and schemes, living as fallen creatures,
and living in the hope of paradise regained.
First of all, we are living between commands and schemes.
And you can see that in verse 15 of chapter 2.
It says,
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
And the Lord God commanded the man,
You're 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 certainly die.
We have a slide.
And this slide is meant to depict for us the distinction between,
I think it's the other slide, actually.
Is there another slide?
There we go.
The distinction between the creator,
who is sovereign and has sovereign authority and control over his creation and his creatures,
and therefore he's independent,
and his creatures which are derivative,
which depend on God's authority for our existence and our sustenance.
And what this suggests to us,
what Genesis 2 tells us,
is that our creator God built into his universe certain laws.
Right?
So if you go out today,
you'll find physical laws out in the world.
And if you break those laws,
if you jump from a high place and you break the law of gravity,
what's going to happen?
You will be broken.
Okay?
If you break that law,
you're going to be broken.
And there are certain moral and spiritual laws
that God has also built into the world to protect us and to keep us safe.
Right?
God is like a good parent who says to their child,
hey, you are totally free.
Right?
You're absolutely free to go out and enjoy the whole house.
You can enjoy the entire yard.
But just don't touch the stove.
And don't go play in the busy street.
Because then you're going to be miserable.
The creator God says,
look, if you want freedom for enjoying paradise,
then you should not seek freedom from my moral and spiritual laws.
And this is interesting because our culture seeks freedom from all the time.
Right?
Freedom from constraints that limit our individualism, our self-expression.
We especially seek freedom from even the things that will cause us to be burned
and cause us to get run over.
And that's strange because also in our culture,
we know that to have freedom for the things that we value,
to have freedom to become a master at a sport
or to gain mastery over an instrument,
to master a field of knowledge or an area of expertise,
then you have to submit yourself to the right kind of liberating constraints
if you want to ultimately be free to excel in those things
and to be excellent in those things.
And what Genesis 2 is telling us is that God gave us this bountiful
and these lavish provisions in the Garden of Eden.
And he did that so that his image-bearing human beings could carry out their privilege,
they could carry out their responsibility as image bearers,
as garden keepers, as culture makers, as temple builders,
all the things we talked about last week,
so that we could, he gave us all these blessings
so we could obediently serve God and worship God
and we could enjoy life and enjoy his goodness.
Basically what this is telling us is that God gave us one million yeses
and he gave us one no.
A million yeses and one no.
And parents, when you tell your kid no, what do they say?
Why not?
And then what do you say?
Because I said so.
You don't sit there and go, well, let's have a conversation,
let's do a little cost-benefit analysis on what I just,
no, because I said so.
Well, something's here in addition to these divine commands,
and we read about it in verse 1.
It says,
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made,
and he said to the woman,
Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
Now we're not told how,
but we just know that there's this dark power here.
It's mysterious.
He's taken over one of God's good creatures.
Jesus calls this power the devil or Satan.
He says that he's a liar and he's the father of lies.
Jesus says that he came to steal and kill and destroy.
He told us to pray that God would deliver us from this evil one.
And this is the very same one who came to Jesus when he was in the wilderness for 40 days,
and he tempted Jesus.
And then he continued to tempt Jesus throughout his ministry all the way to the very end.
And we need to remember that this is not like Star Wars,
where there's this unending conflict between the true force and the dark side, right?
God, the creator, and this created angel that's fallen, the devil,
are not these two equal and opposite powers that depend on being balanced with each other.
Right?
For various reasons, it's another sermon,
but the devil is an angel who sought to usurp God's throne and subvert God's kingdom,
and therefore he's fallen to a very low place.
And here he is posing a question,
did God really say?
And what this tells us is that all the books and the movies that we consume
that depict evil as something stark and something ugly and something in your face
and something obvious,
all those movies are wrong.
All those books are wrong.
Because evil is subtle.
It's low key.
It comes to us as something quite attractive and something quite sophisticated.
The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2,
he says,
we are not unaware of Satan's schemes lest he outwit us.
And what he's saying there is that the devil has subtle and shrewd schemes
that can outsmart us and outmaneuver us and outwit us,
and we need to know what they are.
So what are they?
Well, it's not so much to win us over to a particular argument
as it is to cultivate an atmosphere and an attitude.
Right?
An atmosphere and an attitude about the word of God and the commands of God.
Did God really say?
In that is, are you kidding me?
This is ridiculous, isn't it?
This is laughable.
See, he's trying to curate an atmosphere and an attitude,
and if you'll pay very close attention,
he uses the word God rather than the word Lord
to try to make the Creator seem impersonal and distant and uncaring.
And then he used the word say,
did God really say,
as opposed to did God really command,
because he wants to kind of soften the command into a suggestion.
And then he uses the word any of the trees,
not one of the trees,
because he wants God to seem like he's not a provider,
but rather that God is a prohibitor,
that he doesn't want you to enjoy any of the trees.
You see, what we saw in Genesis 1-2
is that the Lord's authoritative word
created everything out of nothing.
His powerful commands brought into existence
things that were not.
But now there's a question about the precise wording,
the precise meaning,
the precise motive of the Lord's commandment.
Does God have integrity?
Is God good?
Are his laws good for people?
Is this even a command?
Or is it a suggestion?
And what is it that these image-bearing human beings
should have done right here at this moment
when they're posed with this question?
What should they have done?
Adam and Eve are right there together.
Eve's not alone.
Adam's right there.
What should they have done?
They should have called out to their creator God
and said, help.
And then they should have driven this dark power
out of the garden.
But Adam's silence is deafening.
And his inactivity is glaring.
And Eve proceeds to engage with the question
in such a way that she allows herself
to be pulled into,
and allows herself and Adam
to be pulled into this atmosphere
and into this attitude.
And here's what she says in verse 2.
The woman said to the serpent,
we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
but God did say,
you must not eat fruit from the tree
that is in the middle of the garden.
You must not touch it or you will die.
And again, if you pay very close attention,
careful attention,
Eve makes several telling changes to God's word.
First of all,
the Lord said,
you may freely eat,
but Eve said simply,
we may eat.
And she left out the key word,
free.
She's minimizing the provision of the Lord.
She's disparaging the privileges
that she's been given.
She's downplaying the one million yeses.
Secondly,
the Lord said,
nothing about touching the tree.
But Eve replies,
God said we must not even touch it.
Not only is she adding
to the Lord's one no,
his one prohibition
to make it seem more restrictive
than it actually is.
But she's begun to use the language
that the devil's using.
She's talking not about the Lord.
She's talking about God.
Maybe he is distant.
Maybe he is impersonal.
Maybe he doesn't really care.
And the third thing is,
the Lord declared,
you shall certainly die,
but Eve said,
you will die.
And she left out the word certainly,
which means she's minimizing
the penalty for disobedience.
And weakening the just consequences
for sin.
And what this means
is that Satan has her
right where he wants her.
He's primed her
with this atmosphere
and this attitude
to,
he's smoothly and subtly
outwitted her
and outsmarted her
and outmaneuvered her
into this distorted
and doubting perspective
and gotten her to focus
on the one no
rather than the one million yeses
so that God seems like
a cosmic killjoy
and the ultimate party pooper.
And verse four says,
you will not certainly die,
the serpent said to the woman,
for God knows
that when you eat of it,
your eyes will be open
and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.
It's interesting that the first
biblical doctrine to be denied
is divine judgment.
But along with that,
the attributes of God
are questioned.
Satan is saying,
you know,
God's not really good.
He's,
God's holding out on you.
He's not sharing all
of the goodness
that he has with you
and therefore
he can't be trusted in you.
You should take matters
into your own hand
and you should put yourself
in the place of God.
Now how does this practically
apply to our lives
this week?
Well, number one,
first application,
is that the devil
quotes scripture.
The devil quotes scripture
and he does the very same thing
when he tempts Jesus.
He quotes the scripture
and that means
that if you're a Christian
and if you've allowed yourself
to become more literate
about our culture
than you are literate
about God's word,
if you're giving more time
and energy
to bestsellers
and blockbusters
to the latest
and greatest trends
to breaking headlines
and, you know,
insightful op-ed pieces
than you are
to our sacred scriptures.
You're a sitting duck
and you need to change
that habit immediately,
starting tomorrow.
You need a plan
for reading God's word.
You need a plan
for memorizing God's word
because this is how Jesus
was able to distinguish
between good and evil
and how he was able
to resist temptation.
If he had to do it that way,
there's no way
that you're going to do it
a different way.
Application number one.
Application number two
is that we can be naive
about nuances.
We can be naive
about nuances
and the way
that the devil
disguises his malevolent intent
in benevolent words.
One of the things
I've seen over the past
ten years of ministry
is that there are
many different forms
and forces
of deconstruction,
deconstruction of faith,
both in the real world
and in the online world
that have led
a lot of people
that I know and love
away from God
and away from the people of God.
And that means
that we need to not be naive.
That you need to guard yourself
not just against
obvious arguments
that are vying
for your attention
and for your allegiance,
but you need to guard yourself
for more subtle
atmospheres
and attitudes
that you might
immerse yourself in.
My friend group,
my media environment,
the books I read,
the artists I pay attention to,
the stuff I consume,
lest you allow yourself
to be slowly
and subtly outwitted
by these predictable schemes.
And parents,
it's your job,
and I know it's a hard job,
but it's your job
to curate
and to channel these things
for your kids.
Do not leave them out there
to fend for themselves.
The third application
is this,
that details matter.
Details matter.
Three times here,
the Word of God
is quoted,
but it's never quoted
appropriately.
It's, first of all,
questioned in a misleading way.
Secondly,
it's paraphrased
with major changes.
And third,
it's just flatly denied.
And if you study
church history,
you can see that
over the past 200 years,
the church
in the Western world,
whenever she's loosened
her grip
on those primary
biblical doctrines
and those primary
biblical ethics
that we are not
to lose our grip on,
chaos
and death
just unsurprisingly
come rushing in
to ruin
both the message
of the church
and the mission
of the church.
And this is why
at least your pastors
and your elders
of the church
think that the details
really matter.
And,
so sorry about that
if we offend you,
but
it's right here
on page
two or three
of our Bible.
So,
this is the thing
I want you to see
is that you're living
between commands
and schemes.
You're living between
divine commands
and devilish schemes.
There's no getting
out of that.
That's just where you are.
That's where you're living.
Second thing I want you
to see is
living as fallen creatures.
Living as fallen creatures.
Verse six is really
the center point
of this narrative
and it says this,
when the woman saw
that the fruit of the tree
was good for food
and pleasing to the eye
and also desirable
for gaining wisdom,
she took some
and ate it.
She also gave some
to her husband
who was with her
and he ate it.
And what's interesting
to me is that
the devil is nowhere
to be found
at this point.
His job is done.
Right?
Once he's
doubted the goodness
of God
and once he's
questioned the
truthfulness of God
and once he's
removed the fear
of God,
he's out of there.
Once he's
deconstructed
the command of God
and deconstructed
the judgment
judgment of God
on disobedience,
Eve and Adam
right there together,
they believe
that they can
put themselves
in the place
of God
without any
consequences.
And with this
attitude
that's crept
into their heart
and with this lie
that's gotten
into their head,
they say
to themselves
these words
from the prophet
Isaiah.
Isaiah chapter 14
says this,
I will ascend
to the heavens.
I will sit
enthroned
on the heights.
I will make
myself like
the most
high God.
And from there
the dominoes
began to fall.
We see that
she saw
the physical
value of the
food.
She saw
the emotional
pleasure
of its
aesthetic
beauty
that it was
pleasing.
And she saw
the spiritual
potential
of advancing
her interests.
And she,
and again,
Adam's right
there,
but she
trusts her
impressions
more than
she trusts
God's
instructions.
And she
substitutes
her values
for God's
norms.
And what
she does
in this
moment,
she becomes
autonomous.
That word
autonomy just
means auto
means self
and nomos
means law.
She became
a law
unto
herself.
She
became
the interpreter
of reality.
She became
the one
who would
say,
this is
good
and this
is evil.
And her
heart and
her head
led her
finally to
this illicit
reach of
autonomy with
her hands.
Now,
again,
how does
this apply
to us?
Well,
I think many
of us,
if we're
honest with
ourselves
and our
own hearts,
we say
this,
we say,
you know,
if I
obey God,
he's going
to keep
me down.
If I
obey God,
I'm going
to miss
out and
I'm not
going to
be happy.
And if I
obey God,
I'm going
to cut
myself off
from better
options and
I won't
be all
that I
want to
be.
I'm not
going to
thrive,
I'm not
going to
flourish.
And so,
I'm not
sure that
God is
enough for
me.
I'm not
sure God's
goodness is
enough for
me.
I'm not
sure I
can trust
the good
will of
God for
me.
I need
to broaden
my horizons.
I need
to take
matters into
my own
hands.
And here's
three particular
ways that we
do that with
respect to
power and
money and
sex.
First of all,
with power,
we say,
you know,
I know the
Bible says
not to hold
a grudge
against this
person and
not to seek
revenge and
that I should
humbly forgive
this person and
go serve this
person, but
oh, I don't
want to.
And I'm
not really
sure I can
trust God
in that.
Or with
money, we
say, I know
the Bible says
that I
shouldn't spend
all of this
on myself.
I know that
I'm supposed
to give at
minimum at
least 10% of
this away to
other people and
other causes,
but I'm not
really sure I
can trust God
with that.
Or with
sex.
You know,
even our
secular friends
know what the
Bible says.
about sex.
That sex is
not a product
to be consumed
outside of
marriage for
our personal
fulfillment, but
rather it's a
gift to be
stewarded inside
the safety of
an exclusive,
permanent,
whole life
covenant
commitment between
a man and
a woman.
And we say,
I know, but
I'm not sure I
can trust God
in that.
And with
every single
one of these,
money, sex, and
power, we
say, yes, you
know, but my
way seems
good.
And my way
seems pleasing.
And my way
seems desirable.
And if I trust
God, if I obey
God, then I just
won't be happy.
And meanwhile,
God is saying to
us, oh, my
children, I am
your Lord.
Your life is a
gift.
The world is a
gift.
And I want you
to live as if
your life in
this world were
not your
possession to do
with whatever you
want with it.
But rather, I want
you to live as if
I'm God.
And I want you to
live as if your
life is dependent
upon my power.
So please don't
eat the tree.
Please don't walk
through the door.
Please do not put
yourself in the
place where only I
deserve to be.
please respect my
no so that you
can enjoy the one
million yeses that
I've given you.
Verse 7 says that
then the eyes of
both of them were
open and they
realized they were
naked so they
sewed fig leaves
together and made
coverings for
themselves.
And then the man
and his wife heard
the sound of the
Lord God as he was
walking in the
garden in the cool
of the day.
And they hid from
the Lord God among
the trees of the
garden.
But the Lord God
called to the man
where are you?
He answered I heard
you in the garden
and I was afraid
because I was
naked so I hid.
There's 20 more
sermons in here and
so I'm going to be
brief.
But this reminds me
of the book of
Proverbs.
It's our book of
wisdom in the
Bible.
One of our books
of wisdom.
And Proverbs 14
12 says there's a
way that seems right
to a man but
in the end it
leads to death.
And what happened
here is that the
evil one promised
life but he
delivered death.
And he always does
that.
He promises life
delivers death.
Death entered into
our souls.
Death entered into
our friendships,
our marriages,
our families,
our work,
our leisure.
And worst of all
death entered into
our relationship
with our creator
God.
God, we're told he
comes by for his
customary afternoon
chat with his
beloved creatures,
his partners.
But now the very
thought of God's
presence leads them
to duck and cover,
right?
To hide over behind
the trees from God.
And if you read on,
you know, they'll
ultimately confess
their crimes but
only after running
from God and evading
God's questions,
changing the subject
multiple times,
shifting blame,
accusing their
neighbors,
minimizing
responsibility,
justifying themselves.
And these fig leaves,
these fig leaves are a
desperate act of
self-protection.
Where once there was
innocence and they
were unashamed and
they were open,
now in their sense of
guilt and shame and
fear, they feel that
they have to hide not
only from God and
from each other, even
they have to hide from
themselves behind
protective barriers.
Our alienation from God
and from each other
and from the created
world and from our
very selves is
absolutely tragic.
It's absolutely
heartbreaking.
And again, there are
more applications of
this for our work and
our dating and our
marriages and our
parenting than we
have time to chase
down.
But what I want us to
focus on as we close
are God's questions.
Because God asks
some questions and
he says this, he
says,
Adam, where are you?
It's a poignant and
profound thing.
The first thing God
does is he asks a
question.
And he says, where
are you?
And who told you that
you were naked?
And have you eaten from
the tree that I
commanded you not to
eat from?
And what is this you
have done?
Four questions.
He asks him not because
he's ignorant or because
he needs more information
or because he doesn't
know the answers.
He asks him because he's
a loving father and he's a
gentle counselor and he
refuses to abandon his
image-bearing creatures.
He doesn't vaporize them.
He doesn't give them a
verbal lashing.
He doesn't give them a
physical beating.
He doesn't do any of
that.
He just asks these
questions, inviting them
to open up, inviting them
to reveal themselves,
inviting them to confess
their wrong, inviting them
to take responsibility.
And in this moment of
rebellion, in this moment
of defiance and of
treason, this moment of
an attempted overthrow of
the government of the
universe, the attempted
de-godding of God, God
is so gracious.
God is so merciful.
It's absolutely
breathtaking and that's
where I want us to close
with, we've talked about
living between commands
and schemes and living as
fallen creatures, but I
want to talk finally about
living in the hope of
paradise regained.
Living in the hope of
paradise regained.
Many people around us are
living in cynicism.
They're living in despair.
They're living with a sense
of nihilism.
And Christians reject
that.
Christians absolutely
resist that because of
this slide that I think
you had a preview of
earlier, but we'll pull
back up.
We believe that the good
creation of God was here
before the fall of
humanity.
We believe that the
common grace of God in
his good creation continues
despite all the effects
of our fallenness.
We believe that the
redemption of God reveals
the power of his
special grace to save us
from our fallen condition.
And we believe that all
the tears and the thorns
of our fallen reality will
be no part of the new
creation of God.
Now where do I get all
that?
Well if you pay attention
to verses 14 to 24 and
what the Lord says and
does even in the midst of
his just judgment of these
sinners, you'll see that
he sovereignly and
majestically does at least
five incredibly gracious
acts.
And I'll just list them for
you.
First of all, he goes
straight to the source of
evil and he curses it.
He curses the serpent, he
curses the devil, he
curses the ground that
human beings work.
But notice that he does not
directly curse his image
bearing creatures.
That's the first act of
grace.
The second act of grace is
that though this man and
this woman have broken
God's image in themselves,
God provides for them.
He provides protective
clothing for them.
And in order to do that,
an animal's blood had to
be shed, an animal's life
had to be taken in their
place and a satisfactory
substitute was provided in
order for God to cover over
their guilt and their shame.
God's third act of grace is
that he removes them from the
garden completely.
And by removing them from
the garden, he prevented
them from eating from the
tree of life and remaining
in that state of disobedience
and sin permanently.
But rather he puts these
angels, he puts these
cherubim to guard the way to
the tree of life and to the
living God himself until
something can be done to
permanently deal with their
sin.
And that's why, by the way,
cherubim, these great angels,
are woven into the curtain
of the temple to separate
sinful human beings from the
holy presence of God.
The fourth thing that God
does is that he restrains and
counteracts all the devastating
effects of sin and says that
evil will not destroy the
enduring goodness of my
creation.
Eve will become a mom.
Adam will become a dad.
Babies will be born.
Life will continue.
Weddings will happen.
Marriages will mature.
Families will grow.
Work will be done.
Culture will develop.
And the fifth gracious thing
that God does is he gives this
mother promise in verse 15
about future relief and an
ultimate victory.
victory.
And in that verse he says,
verse 15,
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.
An offspring of the woman is
going to come and be terribly
wounded,
but he'll crush the head of the
serpent.
A great representative of the
human race, a great person who
bears the image of God is going
to come and he's going to
suffer horribly, but he's going
to bear the curse and the
just judgment that we
deserved and he'll do it in
our place.
And in that way he will win a
victory over evil and he'll
release us from all the effects
of the curse and he will win a
victory in triumph and glory.
So friends, what do these five
actions of God's grace tell us
about God?
They tell us that we are the
hiders and God is the seeker.
They tell us that we are hiding
but God is seeking us.
And we see that in the end of the
gospel because we find Jesus there
at the end of the gospel and he's
in a garden.
And in that garden he's talking to
God about a tree.
He's talking about his cross.
And though we said not your will
but my will be done, Jesus says the
opposite.
He says not my will but your will
be done.
And though we put ourselves in the
place where only God deserves to be,
God and Jesus Christ came and put
himself where we deserve to be.
And in that moment he decided I'm
going to take all their thorns
upon my brow.
And I'm going to put all their sins
on my shoulders.
And I'm going to go to that tree.
And I'm going to experience hell.
And I'm going to battle with the
devil.
And I know I'm going to be laid in
the dust.
And in that moment what happened,
the veil of the temple with those
cherubim was torn in two and the
way to God was opened up.
And through the resurrection of
Jesus, death changed into life.
And he was able then to clothe us
with his righteousness and with his
life.
And one day we're going to share in
his glory.
So I'll close with these words about
the hope that we have for paradise
regained.
The Apostle Paul says this in Romans 5.
He's talking about the second Adam.
He says,
For if by the trespass of the one man
death reigned through that one man,
how much more will those who receive
God's abundant provision of grace and
of the gift of righteousness reign in
life through the one man, Jesus Christ?
And consequently, just as one
trespass resulted in condemnation for
all people, so also one righteous act
resulted in justification in life for
all people.
For just as through the disobedience of
the one man, the many were made
sinners, so also through the obedience
of the one man, the many will be made
righteous.
And just as sin reigned in death, so
also grace might reign through
righteousness to bring eternal life
through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Friends, have you received God's abundant
provision of grace in the ultimate
Adam?
And do you have this gift of His
obedience and of His righteousness and
of His justification?
And are you reigning in eternal life
with Him?
Let's think about that as we come to
this table in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you.