Gospel Prism

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

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.
Genesis 3:1-13, 20-21

Introduction
Last week, I spoke of the King’s plan before the foundations of the world were created. And God knew that His people would reject His Son as their King. Not only that, their desire would be take the throne away from the King and place themselves on the throne. So what does this look like…

Rebellion Run Amok
We cannot understand the ramifications of this story until we grasp what God’s expectations were for His creation. It’s the precursor to the rebellion, but it also explains it as well. The King expected DEPENDENCE from His creation. In Genesis 2:16-17, God lays out his expectations: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.� Nothing was off-limits to Adam and Eve except for one tree, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Now let’s stop to think about that for a moment. At this tree, God told Adam and Eve to eat from EVERY tree except for one. They were not kept from enjoying anything: each other, the fruits, the sights, the animals, all except for one tree. To think this would be such a terrible thing is to really fail to see how gracious God was to Adam and Eve. He had no desire to withhold joy, but rather, to give it freely and abundantly.

Then why the tree? Why would God decide to even make one tree off limits at all? Because the Tree itself was a living symbol of Adam’s obedience and dependence on God. I agree with John Calvin when he says: “Therefore, abstinence from the fruit of one tree was a kind of first lesson in obedience, that man might know he had a Director and Lord of his life, on whose will he ought to depend, and in whose commands he ought to acquiesce. And this, truly, is the only rule of living well and rationally, that men should exercise themselves in obeying God.� Living well, even to this day, means depending on God and not on oneself, according to the Bible. And this Tree was to be a lasting reminder to Adam and Eve that by enjoying everything except for this tree was to show them how great it was to delight in their King and His rule and His glory. But sadly, this dependence would eventually be something that Adam and Eve and every human being since would no longer desire from the King of Kings. We need look no further than Genesis 3:1-5 to find out what happened.

Here we see the first light of this rebellion, and it begins with a DE-EMPHASIS on God’s Word. Look at how Eve tragically misquotes God. In 2:17, God says: “…for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.� Eve DE-EMPHASIZES God’s warning and says: “‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.’� Notice God never said touching the tree would lead to death. But she adds this prohibition, almost making God out to be a repressive ruler. Eve has also left out the degree of God’s warning, “dying you shall die� or “surely die,� to simply “die.� The word “lest you die,� seems to imply that death isn’t even assured. Eve conspicuously overlooks God’s generosity and beneficence. God is deemed dictatorial and tyrannical, not even wanting them to touch the tree. At best, He is wishy-washy, giving half-baked, half-hearted commands that have no teeth to them.

And this de-emphasis on sin has been going on ever since. Sin and rebellion are words we do not like to use. Instead, we like words such as disease or foible or idiosyncrasy or quirkiness to describe sin. Sin is not a rejection of God or a rebelling against the King. And so in de-emphasizing sin, we deemphasize God’s Word as well. Eve knew what God wanted of her, her loyalty, her dependence. But in order to get over the hump of obedience, she had to lessen God’s command to make it feel okay enough in her conscience to rebel against his command.

Then there is a shift from Eve’s de-emphasis to Satan’s DISTORTION of God’s words in verses 4-6: “4 And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely shall not die! 5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.� There is something in the serpent’s words that reveals his subtle craftiness. He never coaxes Eve to just take the fruit and eat it. Instead, he works very hard to diminish the Word of God with God’s own words. The serpent uses the art of suspicion, that feeling of being left behind, of some treasure being withheld. The temptation is not to do evil, but to focus on that which is good, the good things that God has given to Adam and Eve. The serpent exaggerates the nature of that which is good, but to the point of that good thing being idolized, where the allure of that created thing becomes more worthy of worship than the Creator. He has Distorted that which is good to be a point of rebellion for Adam and Eve. That is exactly Paul’s point in his condemnation of all who sin in Romans 1:25 when he says: “25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.� 1 John 2:16 summarizes this too well: “16 For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.�

From a de-emphasis on God’s Word and then to a distortion of the truth, the rebellion then moves to a response, a DELIGHT to the senses. Rebellion and sin usually feels good or else no one would ever sin. Sin can be a sweet delight to the senses. Paul writes in Eph. 5:29: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.� Our flesh loves being fed and it feels really good for the moment. The flesh delights in the nude models on the computer screen. It delights in drugs or food or alcohol. It delights in the smell of a thick wad of bills or a bank account that is the envy of all. But it also delights in fame, or glory, or the admiration of others, or the recognition of others in our lives. And it was no different for Adam and Eve in v. 6: “6 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 desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.�

But the problem with the delight is that it is quickly fleeting. The sexual encounter with a mistress might be physically appealing for the moment, but when the morning arrives and the husband must go home and sees the consequences of his sin, his world will never be the same. Life becomes now a life of deception to keep his dark secret from his wife and children. He is now living a double life and it is always on the edge of breaking apart. Or if you have ever been in an argument with a loved one, if you have ever spoken hurtful words that just “slipped out,� perhaps you might have said such words intending them to hurt, but when you see the full pain those words have caused, you begin to see that such anger and pain doesn’t feel as good as you thought they would be. You wish you had those words back, but the damage has been done. Sin feels so good for the moment and then so terrible after the moment has passed. And again, we can look at what happens to Adam and Eve to see this to be true for the first sinners as verse 7 shows us:

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.� So when their eyes are opened, the first thing they noticed was that they were naked. Eve was told that she would be “like God.� But why would they have realized this then? Adam and Eve were created to be in perfect community, reflecting God Himself in community. Their nakedness was not a symbol of shame, but of complentariness. They were supposed to belong together. But following their taking of the fruit, they discover something different. The very nature of the fruit, to achieve independence of God, to be morally autonomous, to decide for oneself what is right or wrong, compels the person to self-absorption. Now, not only were Adam and Eve hiding from God, but in every way, from one another. Their sexual organs, uniquely designed only to complement the other gender, male to female, to do the one thing that explicitly symbolizes the power of God, to create another human being, were no longer symbols of community, freedom, and togetherness, but now were signs of independence, shame, and rebellion. Otherness is out the window, and the power of the self is here to stay. And in our world, self has usurped the true King as king.

For the first time, Adam and Eve no longer depended on God to determine what was best for them. They would from this time forward be their own determinants for good and evil and in this way, they received exactly what they wanted. The problem was that they were also imperfect now in their ability to know how to manage this new found awareness. Unlike God who would and could never choose evil for his ultimate good, Adam and Eve would now live with this innate desire for rebellion and evil. And the first manifestation of this knowledge of evil was their shame. They looked at themselves and then each other and they felt ashamed of their nakedness. According to biblical scholar Bruce Waltke (Bruce Waltke, Genesis, 92), nakedness in the Bible is usually described of as someone “stripped of protective clothing and ‘naked’ in the sense of being defenseless, weak, or humiliated (Dt. 28:48; Job 1:21; Isa. 58:7). With an awareness of guilt and a loss of innocence, the couple now feels shame in their naked state.�

Shame flows from this heart because no longer would they feel God’s protection and dependence from Him. From this point forward, they would protect themselves and be their own God. Because they couldn’t depend on God’s identity any more, they had to build their own identity, their own reputation. So anything that tried to in any way diminish that identity was now something to feel shame. Before they were utterly dependent on God for their physical identity. Now they looked down at themselves and realized that they were completely naked and the imperfections of that body now stood clear. Adam and Eve and all of us, we are woefully dependent on what others think of us. We have a fear of man. Because we are striving to be our own King, whether someone bows down to us, pays respect to us, affects our core identity. And when someone gives us such honor and yes, perhaps worship, we humans abuse people, we are delusional with our own sense of grandeur. We not only have a fear of man, we are far too easily addicted to man’s opinions of us. Think of how easy it is for us to feel shame over our physical body. The color of our hair, our weight, the hair style, the clothing we wear, our body shape, muscles or lack thereof our feet, our clumsiness, our body odor, dandruff in the hair, acne, crooked teeth, smelly breath, and this is only a smidgen of our physical features that we either feel some shame about or have been shamed. I have not mentioned our physical abilities, intelligence, artistic prowess, musical abilities, family background, financial well-being, etc. The list goes on. Since Adam and Eve’s sin, we are never satisfied with who we are because we need to feel good about ourselves by striving to obtain this identity. Sadly though, we will always find something that falls short.

So we began with a Dependence on God but rebellion brought about a De-Emphasis on God’s Word, a Distortion of the truth, a Delight to the eyes of the flesh, and now we must deal with the DEVASTATION of this rebellion in our lives. Sin and rebellion would be a part of the human condition. And when there is sin, people will respond to sin with even more sin and the vicious cycle will continue with terrible destruction. When a child is abused, that child will respond to the sin against her with abuse against her own child. When someone spews forth vicious venom against us, we will respond with equal venom. We see this from the aftermath of the first sin. When the shame sunk into their souls, Adam and Eve hid from God.

So God asks Adam: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?� God knows exactly what has happened and he is leading Adam down the path so that he might own up to his own sin and take responsibility for it. But Adam’s response is the purest form of blameshifting: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.� Adam is able to kill two birds with one stone. He blames Eve, but then he ultimately blames God. God created Eve because “it was not good for man to be alone� (2:18). Surely, when Adam first saw Eve, he did not say to God, “God take her away from me because she will lead me down the path to destruction.� Instead, he had been ecstatic. But this whole incident simply reveals that even that which is for Adam’s best, can be distorted and perverted to actually be a curse rather than a blessing. Also, can there be anything more humanly sinful than to turn and betray the one person (and at this point there was only one other person) whom you love the most and are called to protect? How many husbands have promised to love and protect and cherish their wives only to revile and hate and destroy the very person that he promised to love and protect? Consider Adam the first derelict husband, one of far too many to come. Rather than protecting the Garden and protecting his wife from the serpent, Adam has resorted to self-protection.

The rebellion is now complete. Dependence on God has vanished. Prior to this rebellion God was at the forefront of Adam and Eve’s lives and they lived with joy and delight for one another, completely free from shame and completely open to their King. But since the rebellion, they have now tried to wrest the Kingship from the King, they are caught, they hide, they feel shame, they blame each other for the wrong and they blame the King Himself. This is an all-too-common scene in our lives today. And still, in the midst of the rebellion run amok, there is grace.

And Still…Grace
Now let’s look at verses 20-21: “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.â€? Adam names his wife “Eve,â€? which the narrator explains is because she is “the mother of all living.â€? When you think about the oddity of this phrase, particularly in light of the context, you begin to realize that the sentence is indeed very odd. In fact, you can say that it is incredible, amazing, startling. Adam and Eve have admitted that they wanted to be freed of God, even though He is omnipresent and omnipotent and so they can, in a sense, never be free from Him. God’s holiness demands only one punishment that is suitable, death. So, at this point if God had decided to wipe Adam and Eve off the face of the earth, it would make complete sense. In fact, justice demanded that God do so. And yet, the machination of God’s plan of salvation was now in the works. God would not wipe out Adam and Eve. Something else would happen that would “make upâ€? or “take the placeâ€? of their sin. So Adam names Eve the mother of all living. An absurdity when taken in light of the curses, but it makes sense all considering that humanity would still be allowed to live, albeit in a very different way.

In verse 21, God takes this grace one step further. He makes what are literally, “tunics of skin� for the couple. These tunics were usually long shirts that would cover them from the shoulders to if not the ankles, then at least the knees. If you can recall, following their sin, Adam and Eve had attempted to cover themselves (3:7) with fig leaves to make loincloths. Of course, these loincloths barely covered their private areas. Fig leaves also, were not the most suitable fabric for clothing. They are subject to tears and crinkle up in the wrong places. But God’s clothing is one that covers them fully.

People will always try to cover their own sin and shame, in a sense trying to cover their shame through fig leaves. Think of the many ways we deal with our sin and rebellion against God and others. People fight to be strong through their careers or their money or their intelligence or good looks. If I can only obtain this place in my career or have this much money or be accepted by these people or network with that group of powerbrokers, then I will no longer lack anything. I will be my own boss, my own King, and yes, my own god. But this is only a fig leaf. It will eventually unravel, either here in this earth or when we are about to lose everything in death. And at that time, fig leaves won’t cover the shame. We are hard at work building up a reputation that commands respect. And because of this, our heads are so big that we listen to no one but ourselves. We are closed to hear correction from those who care about us the most. We are quick to boast about how well we are doing, especially in how integral we are to our workplace. We are constantly defending ourselves when we are corrected in any way, even graciously and lovingly. This is the fig leaf effect and it lasts only until the fig leaf gives way and then the shame again returns.

God has clothed us with something far better and more eternally permanent than these things. Isaiah 61:10 says that God has clothed us with a robe of righteousness. And Romans 9:30ff teaches us that this righteousness is the very perfect righteousness of Christ that is received by faith in the King. Can you believe that after Adam and Eve’s rebellion, God decides to unilaterally act to save them and those following Him through the sacrifice not of the imperfect animals but of His Son, King Jesus? This is why Paul writes Romans 3:25-26: “Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.â€? God put forward His Son, not in Romans, but yes, here in Genesis. Last week, we learned that before the foundations of the earth were created, God put forward His Kingly Son to be the atoning sacrifice, a propitiation for our sins.

This is how great our God is. His grace is beyond comprehension. So do you see why trying harder to please God by our good works, any works, is nothing but mere figleaves? According to Isaiah 64:6, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.� When we believe and trust King Jesus as He is nailed to the cross, and when we repent of our sins, and we embrace His perfect righteousness as our own, we have a new identity. We are free to forgive, to love, and yes, we are free to enjoy our dependence on God. Repentance is not feeling bad about yourself. If that were all there was, repentance would be terrible. Be repentance is to take a new direction, to transform, to decide that to depend on God once again is far better than self-dependence and self-absorption. It is to see the devastation that Adam and Eve saw with horror when they now realized what life would be like without God in their lives. And so repentance means for the first time, you are not God in this world. It means what David Powlison (David Powlison, Speaking the Truth in Love, 36) calls an “ongoing reversal of our deepest instincts and opinions.� Because Adam and Eve has shown us that rebellion against the King has now gives us a knowledge of evil and we love it, we are drawn to it and we refuse to let it go. J. C. Ryle (Ibid., 36) put it this way: “You and sin must quarrel, if you and God are to be friends.� To give up this quarrel, where you no longer wrestle with sin at all, is no better than to blatantly sin. It is still rooted in the heart of independence from God. And this is why Adam and Eve needed God to act first, to make the clothing for them. They could not love God any more. And this is why God had to act first for all of us thereafter, God put forth His Son so that we can enjoy Him forever. So we repent over our sin and lack of desire for Him, not to feel bad about ourselves, but to say that God is far better at giving us joy and meaning in this world. We strive for a victory in an argument, to be top of the class, to have a child who is a genius, to be complimented in our good looks, etc. as our joy. But oh how temporary that is. God wants to give you joy by your eternal delight in His Son, the King’s love for you and His acceptance of you in light of His death. Let’s give King Jesus the crown back in your life. You won’t regret it forever.

Christ as the Anti-Rebellion
So if you juxtapose, Jesus to Adam (Romans 5), you can see how the affects of rebellion are flipped on its head in Jesus Christ.

Jesus…

1. Instead of De-Emphasis, places an Emphasis ON God’s Word

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
(Matthew 5:4)

2. Instead of Distortion, Fulfills every Word and Command that God has given

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
(Matthew 5:17-18)

3. Instead of a temporary Delight, gives us an Eternal Delight

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
(John 4:13-14)

4. Instead of Devastation, brings Abundant Life here and eternally

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.
(Matthew 19:29)

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
(John 10:10)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,
(Ephesians 3:20)