Genesis: AUTHORITY
A Story Of Redemption: Genesis 3:1-24
Pastor John Weathersby
Sunday October 23, 2022
Notes/Not a Transcript
I submit to you that by the end of Genesis 3, we’ll be impressed knowing that in the newly created heavens and earth, there will be no creature, angelic or human, who has not seen by experience the full ramifications of life outside of God’s provision and care. No being will exist which has not experienced corrupted existence in a perversion of God’s perfect character. As such, there will no longer be any reason or reasonable doubt of God’s goodness, grace, and worthiness of worship. This perfect restoration will be more perfect than it was previously, by God’s sovereign grace.
As such, through God’s divine patience and sovereignty, we’ll more fully understand
Revelation 21:1–4 (ESV)
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
So how do we get to that future point, God starts us at the beginning, and this morning brings us to that moment where we move from Genesis 1:31
Genesis 1:31 (ESV)
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
To where we’ll end today, Genesis 3:22-24
In Genesis 3, we’ll see God’s good purposes undone in the first Adam, tempted to:
1. Doubt God’s good intentions (verse 1/2)
2. Trust the tempter’s vision over God’s (Verse 4)
3. Become God’s glory (verse 5)
We pick up quickly into a narrative from the 6 days of creation in Genesis 1, to the recapitulation of creation in Genesis 2 (with specific emphasis on the outcome of people) to now deadpanning Genesis 3:1
Genesis 3:1 (ESV)
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
The serpent was “more crafty” than any other beast. Satan, differentiated from the animals, and as God had recently created Adam and Eve as husband and wife, fresh creation, singles out the woman with a mission to sow seeds of doubt. Through his craftiness, Satan’s influence on an animal from God’s creation speaks to Eve, suggesting that God’s very word and command was cloaked in agenda.
In verses 2-6, we see Satan suggesting a twisted motive of God’s, giving seeming logical evidence.
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Genesis 3:4–5 (ESV)
4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
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.”
From the crowning of creation through the union of complementing man and woman charged to rule over the garden and everything in it – Adam and Eve are quickly ready to doubt God’s worthiness and motives. Succumbing to the suggestion that God desires to withhold good knowledge from them, Eve eats, and when presented with the opportunity to join in, Adam too eats.
Genesis 3:6–7 (ESV)
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
We see the whole of God’s “good” Genesis 1:31 creation corrupted; those called to care for and keep the garden while in fellowship with God have changed their alignment with God. At the suggestion of a serpent, crafty with the Devil’s intentions to:
1. Doubt God’s good intentions (verse 1/2)
2. Trust the tempter’s vision over God’s (Verse 4)
3. Become God’s glory (verse 5)
Pausing here for a moment, we’ll see that the first Adam tempted to place hope, faith, and trust in the above 3-point summary over God. When he succumbs to that temptation, he walks all creation into a groaning scar tissue of fractured relationship. But glory to God that we see the future redemption through King Jesus’ victorious undoing in Matthew 4:1 and Luke 4:1 and the entirety of Jesus’ life lived in all ways like us yet without sin.
Matthew 4:1 (ESV)
The Temptation of Jesus
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Luke 4:1 (ESV)
The Temptation of Jesus
1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness
1 Corinthians 15:45–49 (ESV)
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
The first man, Adam, was made from the dust, and life was breathed into him by God. 1 Corinthians 15 provides a future vision (our current) of the restoration of humanity from the impacts of the fall, where we all die in Adam. Temptation pulled man away and changed everything. Humanity’s common connection to Adam is temptation and a fall from God. This is our corruption from our ultimate purpose to Glorify God forever. As such, Christ then is the second Adam. The one of Eve’s seed promised in Genesis 3:15 to undo the doubting of God and the twisting of Satan twisting of God’s motives. Jesus The Christ will be the first to uphold God’s glory. Christ becomes a life-giving spirit and the source of the believer’s life; the second Adam. Just like we bear the earthly image of Adam, we (as 1 Corinthians 15:49) can bear the likeness of Christ, the second Adam, who undoes the curse through perfect obedience and living a life without sin, demanding no justice of death.
The need for connection to the second Adam is why Jesus would say to Nicodemus in John 3:4
John 3:1–7 (ESV)
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”
3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
Or again in 1 Peter 1:3,
1 Peter 1:3 (ESV)
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
This rebirth is one away from the first Adam, being joined to the second Adam, Christ, and bound to Christ. This is why in Ephesians, Paul will celebrate Christ, who has all things under his charge as rightful king and is over the church says because of their faith (Ephesians 1:1-5)
Ephesians 2:1–5 (ESV)
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
All of that comes as an undoing of what we see in Genesis 3. The crown of creation humanity charged with caring for and subduing everything in the garden fails and falls under temptation to:
1. Doubt God’s good intentions (verse 1/2)
2. Trust the tempter’s vision over God’s (Verse 4)
3. Become God’s glory (verse 5)
This 3-point outline above is the substance of “the fall.”
We see it today. In the name of high knowledge and scholarship, we doubt the God of creation and his clear order in life. In Genesis 3:8-13 there is counsel with God.
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.”
While the results of the fall were immediate (they knew they were naked, verse 7, they hid from God, verse 8), these were evidence of the rapid changes in verses 14-19. God describes to them more changes in the new way of knowing both good and evil.
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 treeof 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.”
It was an early display of what Paul would later describe in Romans 1:28
Romans 1:28 (ESV)
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
And lots of other protracted ramifications, such as: 2 Corinthians 4:4.
2 Corinthians 4:4 (ESV)
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
In verse 20/21, we see now death has entered into the world, and by His grace and mercy, God gives clothing to the man and woman rather than their quickly stitched leaves, and we have this pronouncement in 22-24
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.
The omniscient (all-knowing) God who created them in His image (Genesis 1:26) now talks about knowledge of good and evil because of the tempter’s suggestion and Adams’s compliance.
Genesis 1:26 (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Genesis 3:22 (ESV)
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—”
The omniscience of the Godhead knows Good and Evil, not through the experience of evil, but fully understanding resistance to His characteristics and the full impact of that. So God, by grace, states the plan for redemption, reorientation, and rejoining relationship.
Adam, perhaps through response to God’s grace in Genesis 3:15
Genesis 3:15 (ESV)
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.”
Renames Eve, Genesis 3:20
Genesis 3:20 (ESV)
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
As we learn later, Romans 10:17
Romans 10:17 (ESV)
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Seeing that God is true:
John 3:33–34 (ESV)
33 Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.
34 For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
Romans 3:4–5 (ESV)
4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
“That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”
5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.)
We see in a moment from Genesis 1:31 that everything is good, to temptation in Genesis 3:1 and the fall in Genesis 3:7 the impact of
1. Doubting God’s good intentions (verse 1/2)
2. Trusting the tempter’s vision over God’s (Verse 4)
3. Becoming God’s glory (verse 5)
But the undoing impact of Adam’s faith in God’s Genesis 3:15 promise of redemption and restoration of order through the woman’s seed.
Romans 16:20 (ESV)
20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Church, I pray this picture of redemption to God describes each of you; and it can. God as a merciful creator, clothed the sinner in the garden while giving the promise, demonstrating God’s favor towards us, his crown of creation. With Jesus’ undoing of the fall, being rejoined to Him born from above, repenting in trusting ourselves in trusting Jesus as Lord makes us justified, and I pray that is you.
I pray you’re encouraged by this great picture of the Genesis account. That you’ll spend more time this week diving into the Word and that with me, you look forward to the newly created heavens and earth. An eternal dwelling populated by no creature, angelic or human, who has not seen by experience the full ramifications of life outside of God’s provision and care. All having seen and experienced life under the impact of misalignment to perfect character and where there will no longer be any reason to or reasonable doubt of God’s goodness. No tear, no mourning, no pain. Where unvarnished celebration and fellowship of a Holy God occupy our hearts and minds fully, uncorrupted, this is our promised eternal future.
Pray, Observe, Apply.
