Separated from God

Genesis 3:20-24 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. 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.

There are three lines of promise running through the Old Testament that have their source in this chapter. Genesis 3 recounts the history of the fall, but it also records the beginning of God’s redemption that culminates in Christ. The promise of Genesis 3:15 was made to the woman through whom sin entered the world. God’s grace ordained that through her offspring or seed salvation should be brought to fallen humanity. This seed of the woman is the first promise of Christ born of a virgin.

Isaiah 7:14 ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Galatians 4:4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.

The prophecy that the serpent will strike his heel refers to Christ’s suffering when He was stricken by God for our sins. The other half of the prophecy that the woman’s seed “will crush your head’ spoken to the devil, refers to the victory of the Cross, including the Resurrection. To bruise a serpent’s head is to destroy it and its power to harm.

Hebrews 2:14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—

The Old Testament prophecies all move toward the ultimate fulfillment of the promise of man’s redemption through the Messiah Jesus. Women back then all hoped the promised one would come from her or at least her line. That’s why genealogy was so important in the Bible. They were carefully preserved to prove the direct line of the seed of the woman to Christ.

The next line of promise has to do with sacrifices. Something to note about God clothing Adam and Eve in animal skins was: something had to die to get those skins. Animals were first killed on man’s behalf to cover their nakedness caused by sin. And of course there were animal sacrifices right up to The Lamb of God.

The third line of promise is eternal life. When God shut man out of Eden, it was in mercy and with a view to his future restoration. If he had stayed there and eaten from the tree of life he would have lived eternally in a state of sinfulness. Eternal life was to be kept safely in store for man when he should be redeemed and cleansed from sin by Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, faith in the promises of God, which would be fulfilled in Christ, led to eternal life. In the New Testament we learn that faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning work on the cross is the only way to have eternal life.

The cherubim here was a heavenly being mentioned throughout Scripture. God commanded that their likeness should be embroidered upon the most holy veil and carved above the most Holy Ark representing God’s presence in the temple. Ezekiel saw them in his vision of God. John saw them in his. Whether they are intended to be symbolical or actual fact, the Bible portrays them as living beings, appearing in winged-animal form with faces of lion, ox, man and eagle. Here he is guarding Paradise with a revolving sword-like flame. Fire is often used to symbolize the holiness (as separate from sin) of God.

God's Curse

Genesis 3:14-19 ¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 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.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in 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.”

¹⁷ 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. 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.”

God’s method in condemning sin is always to trace sin to its source. Although punishment may be delayed, as in the case of physical death, it comes. There are four points to notice concerning God’s condemnation

1.      The serpent’s judgment. The serpent caused the man harm and was cursed and so was the devil who used the serpent.

2.      Eve’s judgment. She would have pain in childbearing, dependence upon her husband and subjection to him.

3.      Adam’s judgment. His was connected to his work. His former delightful occupation now became toil involving sweat, suffering and all the anxieties that comprise the economic situation of today.

4.      Death. Satan said it wouldn’t happen. But it did. God is never mocked. His purpose behind His every word will be fulfilled.

Their Eyes Were Opened: What Adam and Eve Saw

Genesis 3:7-13 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.

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?”

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?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The immediate result of disobedience was that their eyes were opened; they knew they were naked. This guilt started a chain reaction:

They attempted to provide their own garment out of fig leaves. Then they tried to hide when they heard God calling. Then they cringed with fear and insecurity before God. And then they blamed each other and the serpent for their own sin.

We do all of these things when we sin today. We put on good works to keep people from knowing we’re really sinners. We hide from God by turning our back on the church or stop spending time with Him, we feel very insecure because we’re always afraid we’re going to get caught, and we blame everyone else: the government, our parents and the way we were raised, the school system, etc.

This is the exact opposite of what we do when we become believers. Then we accept responsibility of our sin. We respond trustfully to God’s call. We come into His presence looking forward to spending time with Him. We don’t try to cover ourselves, but put on His robe of righteousness and we feel peace because we are His.

The Fall of the Human Race

Chapter Three is about the fall of the entire human race and therefore, the need of every human being for the redemption that is in Christ. This chapter is a pivot point in the Bible. If it were to be taken away, the key to understanding the rest of Scripture would be taken away with it. The record of man’s fall provides the key to social, psychological, and economic problems of today, as well as to religion because we live in the midst of two contradictions. On one hand we have tremendous possibilities. Some psychologists say we use only two-tenths of our potential personal abilities. We are aware we are made for something greater. This stems from a profound awareness of our original glory and destiny.

On the other hand we experience a sense of wrongness, frustration, confusion and deep subconscious uneasiness. We wish we could be different, without selfishness, temper or deceit. We feel like God is far away. Or not pleased with us somehow.

This chapter provides the answer to the contradictions of sin within us as well as the promise that provides the way back to deep contentment through a personal relationship with God and an awareness that “He IS pleased with me!”

Genesis 3:1-6  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 certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from 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.

A commentator wrote that when God created Adam and Eve in His own image, He intended also that they should progress in spiritual development from immaturity to maturity. This was to be accomplished by their exercise of deliberate choice.

Hebrews 5:14 ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Man wasn’t created to just love God and obey Him simply because there was no other way of life available to him. Genesis 3 reveals man as having the opportunity and responsibility to exercise his will, to choose deliberately either for God or against God. Such was the test of the two trees. Both trees were intended to be a means of blessing.

Look at Genesis 2:9 again The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And we haven’t read it yet, but Genesis 3:22 says 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.”

It would appear that the tree of life was the tree Adam was supposed to eat from. If he had done so Adam would have had eternal life.

But the devil caused Eve to look at the only tree that had a negative command. The tree of knowledge was appointed by God for a moral test for Adam and Eve that would exercise and develop their wills, their intellects and emotions. And give them joy by being obedient to God.

By not eating of that tree man would demonstrate his submission to God by choosing to obey Him. But by exercising his God-allowed right of independence against God, he made sin and disobedience a part of his life experience. His knowledge now of good was that it was unattainable to him. At the same time he also received sin’s wages – death. First, immediate spiritual death and secondly ultimate physical death and thirdly, the “second death” that is a biblical term for hell. So sin did not free him. Just the opposite!

The serpent’s reason for tempting man would seem to be to take from him that dominion over the earth given to man by God. Through the fall of man, the devil became “prince and god of this world”.

1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

The serpent had a threefold method of temptation:

1.      He brought doubt of God’s love and discontent with present circumstances. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” He concentrates Eve’s attention upon the one prohibition until she forgets that everything else in the garden is hers. A seed of discontent with God is sown in her heart and this raises a doubt as to whether God really loves her.

2.      The devil pursued his advantage by suggesting that she could sin and get away with it. “You will not surely die.” Until now physical death had no meaning for Adam and Eve since they had never had any experience of it. The devil caused Eve to lose her healthy fear of disobeying God and to doubt His word concerning punishment. Today the devil uses these same tactics when he causes a person to doubt the reality of hell and everlasting punishment. “There’s no such thing; we make our own heaven and hell now.” says man. But Jesus talked about hell more then He did about Heaven!

3.      The devil finally wedged open the door into Eve’s slowly responding heart. He excited her personal ambition to excel. She craved to appear wise and powerful like God and to exert her independent will. “You shall be like God.”

Satan caused Eve to take from his hand what God had planned to give her as a result and reward of obedience. She received the knowledge of good and evil from Satan’s hand and through her choice of evil independence instead of receiving it from God through choice of good dependence. Satan tempts man. Always has and always will. He even tried to tempt Christ in the wilderness.

The Creation of Adam and Eve

Genesis 2:4-25 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵ Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, ⁶ but stream came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. ⁷ Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being

⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush ¹⁴ The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

¹⁸ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

¹⁹ Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s rib and then closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

²⁵ Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Adam is created, but not like the rest of creation - by a word of command. The Lord Himself formed Adam from the dust of the earth, then breathed into Adam’s nostrils the very breath of His own life.

As in Adam’s creation, so in Adam’s early environment, the Lord God is pictured as personally planting an enclosed park where He later intended to place man. The word Eden means “park”. It had to be beautiful! The Lord deliberately set in the midst of the park the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Later, Adam was not forbidden to eat from the tree of life until after he had sinned. Before the fall, apparently man’s body was not exactly “mortal” for it didn’t have to die. But neither was it “immortal” because it could die if sin entered. (As it did.)  Apparently this tree could keep them alive forever.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a test of Adam and Eve’s obedience. The fruit wasn’t anything special. The sin wasn’t in the fruit they ate, but in their choice to disobey God.

After Adam is created, God takes charge of his development. He gave Adam work in the garden. God wants our work to be a joy and train us to trust Him and develop our physical, mental and moral capacities. God gave Adam dominion over the whole earth and brought each animal to Adam to name. (Naming in the ancient world was primarily an exercise of sovereignty and command.)

One commentator wrote that another reason God had Adam name all the animals would be so he would realize he couldn’t have a relationship with even the smartest animal and it would create a longing in him for someone he could have a relationship with. And then God could fulfill his desires.

Another commentator wrote that men and women are driven to each other because woman was taken from man. She’s a piece of him. And that’s why marriage says “two shall become one” – you can almost add “again” here.

And Eve wasn’t created just to make more people. She was to be Adam’s helper. His companion.

God intended that this relationship of man and woman in love, and in joy and service on earth, should lead them to understand their individual love relationship to God and to Christ. All through the Old Testament God compares His love for His people to the love of the husband for his wife.

Isaiah 62:5 As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

Hosea 2:19-20 I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. ²⁰ I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.

In the New Testament, Jesus is portrayed as the Bridegroom of the church.

Thoughts from the book of Genesis

Adam and Eve
From Genesis in the Garden of Eden: When God came looking for Adam and Eve, they were hiding because after sinning they were ashamed to be in His presence. When we wrong someone we tend to hide from him or her. Sin is wronging God. We need to confess our sins immediately, asking forgiveness so we don’t hide from Him. And we need to be specific – not just say, “Forgive my sins.”

Creation of Woman
The love between a man and woman; stronger than death, stronger than the tie to one’s parents, this drive to one anther that does not cease until it again becomes flesh in the child. It comes from the fact that God took woman from man, that they were originally one flesh. They come back together as one flesh in marriage.