Recap:
So far we have looked at the account of creation. Last week we looked at Adam and Eve, The Garden of Eden, and Satan.
Read Genesis 3:1-7
1 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’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’”
4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 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.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
How pathetic to imagine they could hide their nakedness from Father God who had created them.
Read Genesis 3:8-9
8 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. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
Even more pathetic is their attempt to keep their sin from God’s all-seeing eye by attempting to hide themselves.
But do we still try to hide our sins from God today?
Why do we do that? Do we really imagine that God doesn’t see, or worse, that he doesn’t care?
Why is it said that all sin is a direct affront to the holiness of God?
Read Genesis 3:10-13
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
“What is this you have done?” Eve really hadn’t a clue – but God knew precisely the total, worldwide, devastating consequences of her action.
We need to be constantly alert to the fact that sin that we commit could also have far-reaching consequences beyond just ourselves.
Read 13b
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
We know we commit sin, but then our conscience is faced with a dilemma: do we face up to it or do we try to justify ourselves?
Romans 2:15 in the Revised Standard Version has ‘their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them’
Whether our conscience accuses us, or tries to excuse us, we have still committed the sin, and we know it! However, that doesn’t stop our sinful nature from trying to wriggle out of the consequences. It was the same with Adam and Eve. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the Serpent. But each was guilty and each would be punished.
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
What did the serpent look like before it was cursed? Did it stand upright? Presumably it had legs? And arms? Was it attractive to look at?
To loose arms and legs and have to crawl in the dust is very symbolic of the impotence of Satan in the sight of God. The serpent had encouraged Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and doing so she would be contaminated – the serpent’s punishment is that now every mouthful of food that it takes will be contaminated. And Satan, that Bright Morning Star who would have made himself equal with God in the highest heavens, is reduced to crawling in the dust.
15 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.”
There is enmity between women and snakes, but also towards wasps, and rats! And I don’t see snakes as particularly having evil intentions towards humans. So who is this directed towards?
It is aimed towards Satan himself. See Revelation 12:17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
This seems to speak particularly and prophetically about Satan and the offspring of Eve: Jesus Christ, who would ultimately crush Satan, but also suffer as a consequence. And not only Jesus: all who follow him, naturally find Satan abhorrent. But Romans 16:20 encourages us: The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
A hard punishment: The woman’s desire is for her husband but as a result pregnancy and childbirth will be unpleasant and painful. But how do we view the second part of that sentence: ‘and he will rule over you’?
From the beginning, Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
This implies that woman would join man as helper in this rule over all created animals, but Eve is told in verse 16 that from now on Adam will rule over her, and by extension that man will in future rule over woman.
Women have rebelled against this, governments have legislated against it, even some translators of the Bible have attempted to make passages non gender-specific (mankind becoming humankind) but the fact remains that this was part of the consequences of Eve’s sin, and throughout the world, the place of woman has often been subservient to man. (This may well provoke discussion! Also see the notes at the end of this study)
But if man is to be ruler over women, he must accept that he is ultimately responsible for them and therefore for their actions. Even before this, Eve was only Adam’s helper – not his master, so Adam is held personally responsible for his sin.
And it is because Adam allowed sin into his life – and so to his descendants – that the whole human race is now considered sinful:
Let me illustrate (You will need a whiteboard or some other means to display the following pictures They are also available as a PowerPoint presentation download HERE)
Write God and Earth
Add Red line and explain that that represents God.
Add Vegetation (Green line)
Add blue animals | | | | | | | Say ‘these are animals’
Add two red humans || only.
Connect first two humans with red line down to halfway, then complete red line up from people
Say : ‘This is Adam and Eve. God reached down to them, and they reached up to God. So they had a direct relationship with God. But then they sinned’
4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
Draw a black line through the middle. Add ‘SIN’, remove red lines up, and change red people to have a black centre
Say ‘Sin has now entered’’.
If anything, that was worse than dying – a living death, cut off from God. And now each new person will be born in the image of sinful Adam:
Read Genesis 5:1-3
1 This is the written account of Adam’s family line.
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them ‘Mankind’ when they were created.
3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
Draw other humans (Red with black middle) with red lines coming down halfway.
Note that God loves his creation and reaches down to everyone, but sin is a barrier. Humankind, having lost contact with God can continue living according to God’s created plan, but only like an animal. A brilliant, creative, intelligent, loving animal, but no more than that; capable of love, but also capable of hate.
If we only live like that, we have no greater purpose than any other animal species: you live, you die: ‘for dust you are and to dust you will return’.
This was not God’s intention for men and women, so from time to time he reached right down, re-established contact, and used his chosen people to cause others to re-establish contact too.
When God chose people to act on his behalf, some did better than others. But God was flexible, made allowances for their shortcomings, and was even prepared to change his plans to accommodate their failings.
God had planned to take his people from Egypt to Israel by the most direct route. That plan was scuppered so he then led them through the wilderness for 40 years and finally brought them in by the back door. He had intended that Moses would lead them in, but he failed so Joshua had to do it.
God had planned that the Children of Israel would totally drive out the inhabitants of the land (with God’s miraculous intervention) but they failed, and so a poor compromise plan had to suffice.
He planned that they would be his people and he would be their God, and committed himself to a covenant to that effect, but it was turned down by man.
Because of Sin, man had proved that by himself, he would never be able to fulfil God’s purpose in creating him.
However much God intervened, man would always spoil God’s plans by his disobedience.
Finally, God sent Jesus to take the punishment for sin and remove the barrier it had caused. (Rub out black line SIN), people are again able to come into contact with God. (Make some connections in red).
But God’s way of working with us also seems to have changed. In the Old Testament we read of God stepping in and directing whole nations, instructing them how they should behave: (I picture someone trying to enact war scenes with a table full of disobedient toy soldiers, going off fighting their own battles and refusing to do what they were told).
Now individual people can have access into the mind of God, by the Holy Spirit, through the work of Christ, – and we can begin to know God’s will.
When we give our lives to Jesus and ask him into our lives, he gives us his Holy Spirit.
Add yellow line down and replace black inside with yellow, and say ‘The Holy Spirit is in us and the righteousness of Christ clothes us’.
Read Romans 5:12-15
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
Adam represents mankind, and because Adam sinned mankind has become sinful, and death is the result. Even though there was as yet no written law, no commandments; people were just as capable of committing sin.
Sin is a disease that we inherit at birth – you don’t have to teach a child how to be naughty.
We may think it is unfair that we are tainted by the sin of Adam.
It is not Adam’s sin, but it is our own for which we will finally be held accountable before God.
We have exactly the same freedom to make the same choice today – to either choose death, or to choose life through Jesus who came to pay the punishment for our sin – how unfair is that?
But read 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
When Adam sinned, there were to be other consequences: Adam’s sin did not only affect the human race – the whole world itself was corrupted:
Read Genesis 3:17-19
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 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.”
Until now, Adam and Eve had been picking fruit from trees in the Garden of Eden whenever they wanted. This was to change: the food they ate in future was now to be ‘the plants of the field’ and they would have to be planted, tended, and harvested at the appropriate time.
Obviously to start with, they could harvest any plants and vegetables that they could find, but unlike trees, in many cases the vegetable is the plant. Unless others were left to produce seed, the seed collected and stored, and then planted, the plant would be no more. Again to ensure enough cereal seeds, planting fields would be the only solution.
And it would not be easy: v19 ‘By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food’
and worse: v17 ‘through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.’
And they would also now have to continually battle against weeds.
Does that have a parallel as we seek to grow in our spiritual lives?
The serpent said (verse 4) “You will not surely die,” but now (v19) God shows how wrong they were to believe the serpent: for dust you are and to dust you will return – not only will they die, but in death they will to be seen to be only human, not God-like, and will return to the dust from whence they came.
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
Adam named his wife Eve – which means ‘life’. Sardonic, really, as she had brought death.
Adam and eve were ashamed of their nakedness. They tried to cover themselves with leaves (v7) and they hid (v10). God knows that from now on they will need something better than fig leaves to maintain their dignity. Also leaving the perfect conditions in the Garden, man was now to face all the vagaries of climate and needed clothes. God, although angry with their disobedience still loved his creation, and spent time making suitable garments.
For this God had to kill an animal. Some say that as death entered the world for mankind as a result of Adam’s sin, this would be the first of God’s creation to die. But there is nothing in scripture to say that animals would not die, and Adam and Eve fully understood the concept of death before they ate the forbidden fruit.
I like to think that in the same way that the Lord provided clothes for Adam and Eve, he also gave them instruction in Farming – particularly the principle of saving seed for next year’s crop. I can’t imagine that the Lord was far away as they started out in their new life.
22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing 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.” 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 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 choice of life had always been available to Adam and Eve but they chose the path that led to death. Now the way to eternal life would be barred. As we read on through the Old Testament we will see that God himself will initiate many attempts to bring man to himself, but ultimately it would only be the death and resurrection of his son Jesus that would be able to overcome sin and set us free.
Men and Women
The presence of Bible passages emphasizing equality and those suggesting complementary roles has led to different theological interpretations, with some viewing women as equal in all aspects and others as equal in worth but distinct in roles.
Acts 2:17-18
17 “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
Galatians 3:26-29
26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
These passages confirm that all are equal in God’s sight, equally made righteous by the blood of Christ, and are thus equally acceptable to God as heirs of the promise. But that does not change the created order for life on earth. Of course there are notable exceptions – passages where Miriam prophesied alongside Moses and Aaron, and also concerning Deborah, who was a judge and military leader for Israel (Judges 4-5).
The New Testament is clearer on the status of Wives and Husbands
Colossians 3:18-19
18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Also Excerpts from Ephesians 5:22-33
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
And 28: In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
