Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 220th episode. In this episode I’m bringing you another edition of Bible study content I’m creating for my church. This content is every bit as professionally produced as my normal episodes on MHB — and my intent is to continue cross-publishing them for your benefit. So without further delay I bring you: Summit Bible Study.
Hello friends and thank you for listening to another Bible Study. Today we are finishing the third chapter of Genesis. This third chapter of Genesis has told the story of paradise lost. This is the story of Adam and Eve defying God and ushering forward the Fall of Humanity. Eve ate the fruit, shared it with her husband, and all of creation fell from grace because of it. When you study Genesis 3 it’s really important that you understand it in light of the New Testament. This chapter presents the protoevangelium, which means the first gospel. Genesis 3:15 is the very first scripture which tells us Jesus will reign victorious over Satan and over death. In the previous study we underscored God’s goodness by pointing out how He presents the gospel even while sentencing the serpent and humanity to a curse for their disobedience. Despite having just committed a sin so egregious as the Fall itself, God would not punish our first parents without giving them hope for redemption. When you understand the protoevangelium, you understand there was never a moment in time when God had given up on us or had abandoned us.
While studying this chapter we’ve discussed some of Satan’s tactics as he lured Eve into sin. He asked her questions which began from distorted presuppositions. He promised her a position equal with God Himself if she should eat the forbidden fruit. He promised her eyes would be opened, but he withheld just exactly what that meant for her and Adam. While Adam himself didn’t succumb to Satan’s lies, he conducted himself pathetically in the aftermath of being caught in disobedience. He blamed his wife for his own sin and he implicitly blamed God Himself for it. Adam’s actions and his responses demonstrated that his original sin came from a lapse in leadership of his own house. Today we open our study with verses 17-19 where we hear God’s response to this failure and what the consequences shall be. Let’s read:
Gen 3:17-19
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;
19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
God begins His sentencing of Adam by reminding him of his crime. Adam was being punished because he listened to his wife at the expense of obeying God. Satan tried to snare Job in a similar way when Job’s own wife told him he should curse God and die. Satan is not a creator, he doesn’t create anything new, but he is a perverter. One of Satan’s primary strategies is to corrupt the best things God has given us. It’s no wonder he tries to target men through their wives. Adam succumbed to his wife’s temptation and then he blamed her for it when he got caught.
God didn’t allow Adam’s excuse to stand. Yes it was Eve’s fault that she persuaded Adam to eat, but it was Adam’s fault that he listened. So you notice how Adam’s desperate justification is not only rejected by God, but God turns it against him as the actual grounds for his sentence. It’s not uncommon for sinners to incriminate themselves while attempting to justify their sins. In fact this is so common that part of the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination is for arresting-officers to issue Miranda rights. This warns suspects that their own words will be used against them in court and that they have the right to remain silent.
In the parable of the minas found in Luke 19, the unfaithful slave incriminates himself with his own words by admitting he knew his master expected obedience — but he disobeyed him anyway. When the master finds out, he says to the slave, “By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave.” It’s very easy to blame others and to blame God for our sins, but by doing so we are affirming our own understanding that the sin is wrong to begin with and we shouldn’t have done it.
Adam’s sentence is comprised of three conditions. First is that his habitation is now cursed because of his sin. God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.” This curse is the essential removal of paradise. Adam would have to live the rest of his days in a cursed creation. He would no longer dwell in a paradise that was blessed and distinguished. Throughout the Genesis studies we’ve talked about how God created the heavens and the earth to be serviceable towards humanity. Everything was custom-designed to serve as a good living-space for man. All of that was gone now. Turning the created order upside down with a curse meant Adam, and all of his descendants, would be locked in a bloody struggle against nature itself. The creation once served Adam an abundance of all things good, but now our necessary crops must be cultivated by the sweat of our backs and the ingenuity of our industry.
Before the Fall of Man we knew the earth was blessed because of its fruitfulness. God created everything to serve as habitation for man, but the fruitfulness of the earth He expressly purposed for man’s sustenance. Adam’s sin took what was fruitful and made it barren. That was the consequence of sin on the creation, and it’s still the same consequence on man today. An obedient person may be marked by fruitfulness — principally the fruit of the Spirit. By contrast, when a person becomes enslaved to sin he or she deteriorates into a barren wilderness. The consequences of sin are a direct corrosion of your love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To be void of all of these things is to be an enemy of God.
Part of God’s redemptive plan is to destroy the heavens and the earth with fire and create them anew. Listen to the prophecy of this grand destruction and rebirth as given in 2 Peter 3:7-13
[2Pe 3:7-13 NASB95] 7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. 8 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. 9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. 11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! 13 But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
We studied the protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15, in the previous episode. This first introduction of the gospel in the midst of God’s opening remarks concerning punishment for original sin highlighted God’s unfathomable goodness. God is so good He wouldn’t even finish His introduction of the original curse without giving us hope for redemption. We see more of His mercy and his goodness as He’s sentencing Adam. Notice how God cursed the serpent himself, but He never does the same to Adam. He cursed the creation because of Adam, but He didn’t curse Adam. Part of the reason for this is because God always preserves a remnant of His people in order that He might bless them in the future. It’s also because the lineage of Christ would be traced from Adam.
God’s mercy is similarly found in the fact that Adam continued to have any habitation at all. God didn’t strike him dead the moment he sinned — which he would have been justified in doing. While the creation became cursed and fallen from what it once was, it would still be a habitation for humanity which became cursed and fallen as well. While Adam lost the pleasures and safety of paradise, he actually did gain one advantage as a consequence of God’s punishment. Having paradise on earth taken from you encourages you to look for paradise in heaven. Adam would no longer be perfectly content with his home on earth — he would need to hope and pray for eternal life in heaven. The same is true for us today. I don’t think it’s wrong to grieve the tragedies of this world, but the tragedies of this world are a continual reminder that this place can never be our eternal home. We have a future in the direct presence of God where everything is the way it ought to be.
The second condition of the curse was that Adam’s activities and his labor would become difficult for him. All of the things he used to do for pleasure in the garden he would now do for necessity and he would struggle all the while. Before the Fall Adam could maintain the ground with ease. After the Fall the same maintenance would break down his body. The tasks which previously gave him a sense of meaning and purpose would now be a source of anxiety and torment. Remember there was no aversion to loss in paradise. There was no fear of scarcity. Now both of these things would be ever-present in Adam’s mind.
Work is a fascinating thing. Some people love their work and it provides a sense of purpose in their lives. Some people hate their work and they suffer through it because they have to. Christians have long held the principle that work is important because scripture says he who does not work shall not eat. Scripture promotes work for all who are able-bodied and decries laziness. But something Christians commonly miss about work is that it’s also given to us as a sentence for Adam’s sin. God commanded Adam to work as punishment for his sin. In the same way, when we refuse to work our idleness is a daring defiance of this command. Refusing to work is squaring up in rebellion against God and rejecting His sovereignty to punish us.
It’s enlightening to think of it this way because of how commonly people perceive work as unfair or like it’s some kind of punishment. Well when you read Genesis 3 you understand that’s exactly what it is. The uneasiness and weariness of work are parts of the curse which is the punishment for original sin. Such punishments are far less than we deserve. So how should we view work? Should we embrace the toil and work ourselves to the bone? Definitely not. Should we complain about the undesirable circumstance of being forced to do things we don’t want to do? Definitely not.
We should quietly accept that work implies suffering and understand this is part of God’s ordained sentence against humanity. However we should also resist making God’s punishments heavier than He Himself has made them. In Christ we should study to lighten our burdens wherever we can while maintaining a God-honoring submission to the necessity of work. We do this by paying attention to God’s providence and humbly accepting His gifts and blessings when He gives them to us. We should find hope even in the most tedious work environments because we trust that we will find reprieve from drudgery in the kingdom of heaven.
Adam’s food and the act of eating was also changed by the curse. He previously had all the delicacies he could want in the Garden of Eden. Now he must eat the grass of the field like the common beasts. While he used to eat with joy and contentment, now he would eat in sorrow and the sweat of his brow. Part of the reason he would eat in sorrow is because the act of eating was instrumental in his original sin. For the rest of his life, every meal would remind him of the moment he ate the forbidden fruit and forfeited paradise. The guilt and shame which came from defying God would make itself part of a necessary daily ritual.
It sounds harsh but we still deal with this burden today. There’s no pleasure we can partake in which escapes the melancholy cloud of living in a broken world. The miseries, calamities, evils, and deaths embitter the remains of this world’s pleasures and delights. We can’t know what a paradisal existence is like while we inhabit this world. Even the happiest, most healthy people are locked in a constant effort to maintain their circumstances. And all of them know that despite their best efforts, the sands of time are going to rip these circumstances away. Even if you manage to defend your life against all pain, which is impossible, you still get an audience with the suffering of others. This is especially true in an age where we can open our phones and get a front-row seat to tragedies all over the world. If our hearts are not broken by the trials of our own lives, we can be certain to see heartbreaking things which happen to others.
Even in the sorrow of Adam’s eating we see the mercy of God. Adam was sentenced to eat the herbs of the field and to eat bread by the sweat of his face. By comparison the serpent was sentenced to eat the dust of the ground. No one enjoys enduring the consequences of sin. But one silver-lining around the consequences of sin is that they acknowledge the righteousness of God. If God were incorrect and sins were the proper way to live, they wouldn’t lead to such devastating breakdown. Sins would provide pleasure without cost and these positive attributes would extend into your own future and the futures of others. But that’s never what happens with sin. We spoke in a previous study about how unrepentant sinners will conceal the consequences of their sins because they know these consequences affirm the truthfulness of God’s word. That’s the same principle we see here when we talk about the consequences of sin acknowledging the righteousness of God.
Part of what should encourage us and help us to carry on in the midst of these circumstances is understanding God’s mercy is found even in His curses. Yes Adam was cursed to toil all the days of his life, but his toil would make his times of rest all the sweeter. Yes Adam would eat in sorrow, but he would not starve in sorrow. The food would still be nourishment to strengthen him so he could continue living. The bread of the earth would strengthen his body and the words of God would strengthen his heart. His life may be full of trouble but his days would now be short. Adam would not have to live in this cursed creation forever — his newfound mortality guaranteed he would die.
In this way death was a mercy and undoubtedly played into God’s decision to bar Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life. He didn’t want them to live forever as sinners. While death may be a reprieve from life in a cursed creation, this doesn’t change death’s alignment as the enemy. Death is still a function of the Fall and it’s not a good thing. Paul says to die is gain, but this is only because of eternal life in Christ. We should never seize control of death or try to use it as a way to manipulate the world or our own experience. Suicide is a tragic example of this. Everyday someone takes control of his own pain by ending his own life. Suicide is not a God-honoring solution and it’s made more dangerous when it’s institutionalized in the form of legalized euthanasia.
I’m sympathetic to certain cases of euthanasia in the same way I’m sympathetic to the pain and darkness within someone who commits suicide. But in both cases humanity is occupying an office they are unfit to hold. In both cases we are foreclosing on the future in a way that assumes omniscience. This will never get better. I will never stop feeling this way. No one commits suicide without first making such broad claims on the future.
The same problem is true of euthanasia. I understand the arguments in favor of putting someone out of his or her misery — especially in the case of painful, terminal illnesses. But if we opened the door to legalizing euthanasia would we really stop with cases where it might be justified? History tells us otherwise. History tells us we would use rhetorical devices to expand the definition of what it means to be worthy of death. What starts out as euthanizing burn victims condemned to live the remainder of their days in agonizing pain turns into a collective insistence that life as a person with down-syndrome really isn’t worth living. Euthanasia becomes an on-ramp to eugenics and eugenics results in genocide. Authority over life and death belongs to God alone. The moment we try to wield this authority ourselves, our own sinful nature corrupts our vision and leads us down dark and terrible paths.
God’s declaration that Adam shall die and return to the dust is a reminder of our frame. We are made from the dust of the ground and it is the breath of life, given by God, which animates us into living beings. The moment God recalls our spirits, our bodies break down to the dust from which they came. The joy of our lives and even the vitality of life itself is dependent on God. Psalm 104:29 reads, “You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, they expire And return to their dust.”
This allusion to dust is not only an indication of our mortality, but it’s also representative of our frailty as human beings. By our own merits we are small and insignificant like dust. There is nothing formidable about our own strength. In matters of strength we are more like dust than we are like stones. God knows our frame, and He is mindful that we are but dust. His grace and mercy towards us is reflective of His understanding our frailty.
Dust is an apt analogy for our mortality because it illustrates the short span of our lives. The wind may stir the dust into a cloud, and a great man’s life may be a great cloud. But in all cases the cloud dissipates and the dust returns to the ground as soon as the force of the wind is gone. Our first parents’ lives were unique because each of them were entrusted with a spark of immortality in this world. Had they not sinned they would not have died. No other human being has ever experienced that on this side of Heaven. When sin entered the world it brought death with it, and death has been a universal of life ever since.
When we think about the sentence God passed to Adam and Eve we need to keep in mind at every level there are spiritual implications. The sentence itself is an embodied representation of the misery sin inflicts on a soul. And so God is doing two things here: He’s sentencing humanity to punitive consequences for their sin, but He’s also revealing the kind of consequences their sin would have on the soul. The pains of a woman in labor are reflective of the waves of shame one feels when convicted by a guilty conscience. Many unrepentant sinners are able to anesthetize themselves to this pain for periods of time — be it through substance abuse or affirming their sins through self-deceit. But over and over shame will crash down like a wave in the soul of even the most stalwart liar. He will be given glimpses of himself and the reality of what he’s done and these will hit him like rounds of labor pains.
Eve being placed into a position of subjection to her husband represents the soul’s subjection to sin. Living in unrepentant sin means sacrificing your spiritual liberty. Many times this loss of spiritual liberty cascades down to a loss of will itself. Ask anyone who is captured by addiction: even if they want to stop it feels like they can’t stop. This parallel between female subjection to male and the sinner’s subjection to sin is so deep that I think it accounts for God’s comment to Eve when He says, “Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Let’s unpack this idea further by reading Paul’s illustration of the parallel between the two subjections in Romans 7:1-5:
[Rom 7:1-5 NASB95] 1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? 2 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3 So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. 4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
Eve’s desire will be for her husband, and he will rule over her. The sinner’s desire will be for the sin, and the sin will rule over him. I want to be careful to underscore that I’m not comparing biblical male headship to slavery to sin. That misses the point. Adam was head of his house before the Fall, the difference is the combative tension between woman and man concerning this headship which arose in the heart of Eve under the curse. This tension under godly subjection is the result of being unable to see past the loss of liberty — and it’s the same tension which occurs when a person is enslaved to his sin.
God’s curse on the land that it should be barren and overgrown with thorns and thistles is an illustration of the sinner’s soul. A person given over to evil has a soul which is barren concerning the fruits of the Spirit. There is no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control. His sin prevents the soil of his soul from being fertile for such things. The thorns and thistles are the corruption and the fruitfulness of evil. These are all the ways this person lies to others and, like a thorn bush, harms those who get too close to him. Scripture says these sinners are close to being cursed and end up being burned. Adam’s labor amidst the thorns and thistles represents the difficulty faithful people must deal with when working to advance the kingdom of God in a fallen world.
The sinner’s soul has a worldly stain and its tendency is to breakdown much the same way the body breaks down to dust when we die. Part of Adam’s curse was to eat food by the sweat of his face. This embittered the very act of eating, which we discussed earlier in this study. This embitterment points to the soul’s yearning for the comfort of God’s favor. We need God’s favor like we need our necessary food. God’s word and God’s favor are the bread of life.
So we’ve attempted to draw a symbolic connection between the bodily punishments of God’s curse on humanity with the corrosive effects of sin on our souls. The connections become even more powerful and even more fascinating when we examine the atonement of Christ and how each of these curses were answered by it. The travailing labor pains are witnessed in Christ in Isaiah 53:11 where we read, “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.” Jesus rebuked the labor pains of a sinful soul with His atonement on the cross and He defeated the agony of death with His resurrection.
Humanity was enslaved to sin through subjection to God’s law, but Christ was born under the Law and the righteousness of His Spirit sets us free from sin. Galatians 3:13 reads, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE” So Jesus died a cursed death so we might be liberated from the curse of the Fall. The thorns came into the world with the Fall of Man, but Christ bore the crown of thorns on His head. The sweat of our labor for righteousness is mirrored in the hematohidrosis of Christ in Gethsemane (this is when he sweat blood). Sorrow and grief entered the world with sin, and Jesus Himself is described as a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.
Finally death loomed large over all humanity once sin entered the world, and Jesus submitted Himself to death so He might conquer it. You can see how the person of Christ (as the second Adam) and His gospel sacrifice are redemptive answers to all the ways in which the first Adam invited curse onto humanity. Living generations separated from Adam and Eve can make us feel like we didn’t have a say in original sin. It’s true we could not have stopped it. But it’s also true God Himself has redressed every part of it. God has left no detail unchecked in His redemption of a cursed creation and a cursed people. Let’s continue with Genesis 3:20:
Gen 3:20
20 Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.
God named Adam. He named him Adam to signify that he was made from the earth. Adam’s name also points to his habitation on the earth. Adam is the one who named Eve, and her name means “life” or “one who gives life” which is appropriate considering she was the first human mother. In this way she is the mother of all living. Before the Fall Adam simply called her woman, it wasn’t until after that her name was given as Eve.
I believe this is another instance of God’s favor and we see other examples of God changing a person’s name in order to seal a covenant. Remember the protoevangelium described the seed of the woman crushing the serpent’s head. In order for this gospel promise to come true, the woman would have to become a mother. Our first parents displeased God with commission of their sin, but God was faithful and He didn’t reverse His initial blessing that they should be fruitful and multiply.
You might argue that Adam named her this way of his own accord and it wasn’t at God’s direction. Even if this is the case, it still demonstrates Adam’s steadfast faith in the word of God. Even in his corrupted condition he trusts that God is faithful to keep His promises. Either way the naming of Eve illuminates the love of God for humanity. God loved Adam and Eve enough that He would allow them to become the parents of all living despite their disobedience. It’s also a commentary on God’s love for humanity writ large, because He knew their children and all future generations would similarly be corrupted by sin — but he permitted them life anyway. And I also think it’s possible Adam named her Eve with an eye toward the fulfillment of God’s prophecy through her. Her lineage would bring forth Christ Jesus, who is the Source of all life. In Him all the families of the world would be blessed. And to give Eve this name right after receiving a curse for his disobedience would demonstrate a kind of unshakable trust in God all of us could aspire to. Let’s read verse 21:
Gen 3:21
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
So far God’s mercy has been implicit but in this verse we see it plain as day. Yes He corrected our first parents and issued consequences for their disobedience, but here we see proof that He did not abandon them as His children. Much like the father of the returning prodigal, God receives Adam and Eve with care and with kindness. He gives them food to eat and gives them clothing of animal skins to cover their vulnerability. In this moment God didn’t want to kill Adam and Eve, which would have been justified considering their sin.
Notice how with the introduction of sin comes the introduction of clothing. Clothing serves a couple purposes in regard to our interpersonal relationships. It protects our vulnerabilities from people who may want to exploit us and it also hides our shame. These two defenses were not necessary before the Fall. Even today our clothing can symbolize many things about our character. It can broadcast our modesty if we dress appropriately for each occasion. It can also broadcast our sinful promiscuity if we dress in such a way that we know is tempting to others’ lust. Our clothing also has something to say about our vanity and our pride in riches.
The clothing God made for Adam and Eve was strong, warm, but plain and humble. It wasn’t made of the finest silks and satins, rather it was made of plain (probably untrimmed) animal skins. Contrast his humility with the pride of the daughters of Israel as they went on to flaunt accessories and ornaments good only for conveying their social status. If you have food and good clothing which protects you from the elements and facilitates your interpersonal relationships then you are just as well off as God positioned Adam and Eve. You should be content with these basics and stay away from the desire to dress for vanity.
Does this mean fine clothing is inherently sinful? Definitely not. I myself have made the case that pastors should wear suits because suits fit the seriousness of their work. The issue here is one of vanity. Wealthy people with fine clothing should never allow their adornments to justify poor character. They should never deceive themselves into thinking their clothing sufficiently covers their sin — not matter how expensive that clothing is. When Peter is giving instruction to wives for how they should conduct themselves with their husbands he says this:
[1Pe 3:3-4 NASB95] 3 Your adornment must not be merely external braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; 4 but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.
Both our food and our clothing belong to God, so it’s fitting for us to give thanks for these things regularly. This is why we practice rituals like saying grace before meals. It’s just a reminder that God is the source of our necessities and we cannot live without His providence.
Their clothing being made from animal skins means they likely had to watch these animals die. This would have been their first encounter with death, and it was a preview of what was in store for them. In this instance I think it’s safe to assume these animals were slain as a sacrifice and not merely as a natural resource. This sacrifice would be the first to typify the great atoning work of Christ — a sacrifice made once and for all. These animals which God used for skins would have been the first creatures to ever die, and it’s fitting they died as a sacrifice. They were a sacrifice slain from the establishment of the fallen order as we know it. This is a direct foreshadow of the person of Christ, who scripture calls the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. But the thematic parallel doesn’t end there.
The animals sacrificed for clothing were divided between God and man. God was given the flesh as a whole burnt offering and man was given the skins for clothing. The skins covered Adam and Eve’s shame and vulnerability, offering them protection. In the same way Jesus was given up as an atoning sacrifice to God so that we could clothe ourselves in the righteousness of Christ as with a garment. The fig-leaves which our first parents made to try to cover themselves were insufficient to conceal their nakedness. In the same way our own human righteousness is not enough to cover our sin and our shame. We can only clothe ourselves in filthy rags, whereas the imputed righteousness of God serves as proper clothing. Let’s finish by reading verses 22-24:
Gen 3:22-24
22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—
23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
It’s true that Adam and Eve underwent a fundamental transformation upon consuming the forbidden fruit. Something changed in them and now their eyes were open to the knowledge of good and evil. God remarking how the man has become like one of Us carries some bit of humiliating irony though. What kind of gods had Adam and Eve become? They couldn’t even clothe themselves. They felt the humiliation of having listened to Satan’s deceitful counsel. Now they were disgraced before God and His holy angels. They may have gained the knowledge of good and evil, but they lost virtually everything else in the process.
God will allow us to feel disgrace and dishonor because these things have a way of humbling us and encouraging repentance. The Psalmist writes concerning enemies of God who had exalted themselves over His people:
[Psa 83:16-18 NASB95] 16 Fill their faces with dishonor, That they may seek Your name, O LORD. 17 Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, And let them be humiliated and perish, 18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth.
When we exalt ourselves in pride against God, shame and humiliation are normative consequences which bring us back down to reality. A repentant person with a contrite heart will ask himself the questions, “What benefit was I deriving from the things of which I am now ashamed? Is not the outcome of these things death?” And the interesting thing about those questions is that God will have you asking them one way or another. If you’re too arrogant to ask them yourself He’ll knock you down to a position where the questions become the only next logical step. But if you’re humble and faithful, you’ll ask yourself those questions everyday as you imperfectly walk with Jesus and are progressively sanctified by His Spirit.
As soon as you catch yourself believing a lie, it’s better to accept it and ask for forgiveness than it is to manipulate the truth in hopes of saving your own face. God’s announcement that the man had “become like one of Us” was tailored to remind our first parents they had been deceived.
God ejected our first parents from Eden and barred their access to the Tree of Life. Adam’s sin changed his relationship with God insofar as it was no longer deemed sufficient to merely forbid Adam from eating fruit from the Tree of Life. Adam couldn’t be trusted. So God had to keep Adam out Himself. If Adam ate from the Tree of Life in this new, fallen condition, then he would profane a divine sacrament and defy another direct order from God. This time eating the fruit would grant him immortality, and such immortality would fuel his pride far more than the knowledge of good and evil ever could.
Eternal life was a benefit reserved for those who remained faithful to God. Seeking after the benefits of a Christian life without allowing God’s Spirit to transform your character sets you up for disaster. We always want the kingdom of God to advance in our world, but popularizing the gospel comes with its own set of challenging consequences. If being a Christian confers social advantages, the number of people who pretend to follow Christ will be enormous. These people are not interested in the Spirit of God transforming their hearts or renewing their minds, they just want to be seen at church by their friends and neighbors.
This effort to snatch up the benefits without submitting yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ is functionally the same concern God had over Adam and Eve. He didn’t want them to steal eternal life. Not only would it be a cosmic injustice if they did, but it would also destroy their souls. It would destroy their souls in the same way those who use the name of Jesus in vain destroy their souls. If God and His church mean nothing to you beyond reputational advantages or popular influence, then you’re neglecting the only true source of life for your soul — both here on earth and in eternity. You’re chasing after a shadow at the expense of the real thing. Circumventing submission to Jesus Christ in your efforts to usurp the fruits of eternal life only makes your sins more heinous, your conversion less likely, and your destruction more certain.
So God drove Adam out from the Garden of Eden. Our first parents had no say in the matter, they had to leave and God gave them no choice. Adam loved paradise and he wouldn’t have left on his own accord. This forced removal was the exclusion of Adam and all of humanity from the bliss of communion with God. To be in the direct presence of God was the glory of paradise, and humanity would taste it no longer. All the little ways in which God favored Adam were now suspended. The overt displays of God’s grace had ceased. Adam’s strength left him and he became weak like other men. The same thing happened to Samson when the Spirit of God departed from him.
Adam’s relationship with God was lessened and changed. Humanity’s peace with God was gone and their correspondence with Him disrupted. Adam was driven from the garden as one who is unworthy to occupy it and unfit for service there. By rights God could have driven Adam and Eve from this world completely. He would have been justified to cast them into Hell just as He did with the angels who had sinned. But such permanent condemnation would have been in cross-purposes to God’s eternal counsel of redemption. Adam would be sent to till the earth from which he came. He would be sent to a place of work instead of a place of torment. God’s punishment for humanity was less about vengeance against them and more about keeping them humble. Adam’s new station in life would keep him humble and daily remind him of his own mortality.
God is compassionate toward humanity because it’s in His nature to be compassionate. He is a just God, a perfect judge of evil, but He is also a gracious God who is glorified by His power to save and redeem. He could have abandoned our first parents to despair, but instead He reforged His covenant with them on new terms. Adam would be forced by lack of options to journey forward. There would be no going back to the former paradise of Eden. God placed cherubim with flaming swords to guard the passage to the Tree of Life — preventing any possibility of Adam trying to turn back.
This forced process of moving forward is analogous to our own passage from the perceived innocence of childhood to the actual innocence of a redeemed eternity. We start out as little kids with no real conception of good and evil, but as we grow we encounter the brokenness of the world. Some children, tragically, encounter this brokenness far sooner than others. We ourselves become hardened by it and any chance of returning to childhood innocence is gone from us. This is the point along which nothing is sufficient to make us righteous except for Jesus Christ Himself. Only the Spirit of God is able to instill a child-like faith into the heart of a person who has lost his childhood. Since God knows childhood isn’t our eternal destination, and is far from the heavenly existence on offer, He pushes us forward through the painful process of sanctification and eventual glorification. If Adam could return to Eden he wouldn’t have had the courage to walk the journey God wanted for him. Similarly if we could return to youth we may not have the courage to face our own deaths.
Mixed in with this expression of mercy was the reality of Adam’s new irreconcilable hostility to God. The swords were drawn and the flames indicated God’s wrath against our first parents. There could be only one atoning sacrifice sufficient to bridge this impassable divide — the second Adam who is Jesus Christ. The weaponized angels also indicated a war between humanity and the heavenly company. From this moment forward some of humanity would be reconciled to God and others would take up their lot with Satan. The Fall of Man caused humanity to be inextricably mixed up in this spiritual war. There can be no peace with the angels while we are in rebellion against their Lord.
Another reason God stationed angels to guard the Tree of Life was to communicate the first covenant with humanity was irreparably broken. We have no hope of righteousness, happiness, or life by the same path given to our first parents in paradise. We have no more hope of entering the kingdom of Heaven by our own merits than Adam and Eve had hopes of getting past the cherubim. When a person tries to build a good life independent of the Spirit of God they inevitably come undone and hit rock bottom. This experience is so painful that it can feel cruel. It can feel like a spiritual crucifixion. But God doesn’t allow us to experience this out of cruelty anymore than He sent Christ to the cross out of cruelty. It’s all to move us forward into reconciled relationship with Him. It’s all part of His design for the same kind of running embrace given the prodigal when he returned home to his father.
This is our future if we have the faith to see it. This is the destination of our journey if we have the courage to press on. As perfect as paradise was, our eternity in Heaven will be incomparably better. No more tears, no more grief, no more pain. And having known all of these things, we’ll be instilled with a kind of appreciation Adam and Eve never had before the curse. Better than paradisal creations, we will be redeemed creations and that means our eyes will be opened. Our eyes will be opened not so we can have the knowledge of good and evil — as was Satan’s temptation. Our eyes will be opened so we can see the Lord our God. Our holy Savior in all of His magnificent glory forever. I think that’s where we’ll conclude this study. As we’ve traversed the deep texts of Genesis chapter 3, I hope these studies have benefitted you as much as they’ve benefitted me. Thank you all for listening and I’ll see you in the next one.
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