The Fall of Man (2)

In our study on what the Bible teaches about man and sin at the mess that got us to the place where we needed a redeemer. We needed a Savior and of course we're talking about Adam's fall, the fall of man in the sin and what that means for us today. We started last week talking about the importance of the fall and what the fall is all about. Let me just review a little bit because so that we can kind of pick right up where we left off last week. We talked about the importance of understanding the fall that it is important that we grasp what the Bible teaches about that because the rest of the Bible doesn't make any sense. The whole plan of redemption, the whole thrust of the Bible makes no sense unless we understand what the fall is all about. How sin came to be in this world and how it affected all of us. It's very important that we understand that. We talked a little bit about the approach to Genesis 3 and then we actually jumped into the Genesis account. We saw that God gives a divine prohibition and that prohibition was that they were free to eat from any tree in the garden but not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That one prohibition which was not restrictive was not harmful to them at all in the sense that they were limited or restricted in any way. That everything they needed, everything they could have wanted in the provision that God made for them and to violate that one restriction, to violate that one prohibition was simply an act of rebellion. There's nothing to gain from that for them at all. We talked about the identity of the serpent. It was a literal snake. We talked about last week why Satan would choose that particular animal and why he appeared or used that animal in that form. Then we talked about the fact that Satan did actually use the serpent to deceive Eve. Then we also talked last week about the strategy of the temptation. We spent a good bit of time there with the strategy that Satan used in the first five verses. It is a strategy that he comes back to over and over and over again. It's important that we understand that. Again, this is all foundational, very foundational truth. If we understand how Satan crafted that first temptation, then we'll understand a lot of what he does to try to trip us up as well. We saw that he began with a perversion of the Word of God. Did God really say creating a little bit of doubt and then taking the thing that God said and twisting it to the negative, an actual perversion of what God had said to create doubt and to create a feeling that maybe God is trying to keep us from something good. Then an outright denial of the Word of God. Satan said you will not surely die playing on the fact that if they did take it, they wouldn't die immediately and they would think, well, Satan was right. That would further emboldened them to rebellion's God. Then finally an attack on the goodness of God. God knows your eyes will be open to no good and evil. You'll be like Him implying that God is withholding something good from you. And that strategy is the same strategy Satan uses on us. Create a little bit of doubt about God's Word. Then actually deny that if God did say that it doesn't come true. It won't happen. You don't need to believe that. And then God is trying to hide something from you. He's not a good God like you think he is. That's where we left off last week. Let's pick up there in verse 6. Tonight we're just moving straight through Genesis 3, at least through the first 18 or 19 verses. Let's pick up tonight in verse 6 with the process of the temptation. Again, we're spending some time here because this is very critical, foundational, basic truth. The process of temptation. Satan tempted Eve with three particular avenues of temptation. Interestingly enough, they are the same three areas that are mentioned in 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 and 16. Once you look at these verses on the screen, do not love the world. John says or anything in the world, if anyone loves the world, love for the father is not in them. For everything in the world. Now notice that statement. What he's going to do now is to summarize the three basic foundational principles of this world system. Under the dominion and operation of Satan himself, the three basic principles that gird up that world system that Satan operates in. Three things, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That's everything in the world. Everything, every temptation, every sin can at least in some general way be put under one of those three basic categories. So those are the three categories of everything in the world system that Satan has in his arsenal. Okay, now when you look at those three, the lust of the flesh is the desire to have what the flesh wants, physical desires, or the desires of the sinful nature. The lust of the eyes, the desire to have what our eyes see, or the pride of life, the desire to be known, recognized, famous, popular, or you could fill in the blank there, but it all has to do with being noticed, pride in who I am or what I have done or what I have. Those three basic things. Now let's go back to Genesis 3.6. Notice an amazing similarity. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, now that's the lust of the flesh, the desire to satisfy the physical appetites. She saw the fruit was good for food. It appealed to her physical desires. Now not every physical desire is evil. God made us with physical desires. The problem is when we desire to fulfill those physical cravings outside the will of God. And when we do that, you see there was no sinful nature yet. Satan is not appealing to a sinful nature. Here he's appealing to a legitimate physical desire to eat good food, but to do so outside the will of God. That's the lust of the flesh. Notice the second avenue of temptation. When she saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, there's the lust of the eyes. The desire to have what looks good, what is appealing to us, what's pleasing to the eyes. And this also can be very innocent. The desire for something that is to be enjoyed because of its beauty or it can also be used in the scriptures, the lust of the eyes, the strong desire of material possessions. To have whatever we see. And that's the twisted sinful version of the lust of the eyes. And that is the desire to have something that we see that's attractive to us, but that desire never stops. And so it leads to materialism. It leads to a focus on things apart from from God. He appealed to that desire of attractiveness or beauty from her perspective. And then notice the third one. And also desirable for gaining wisdom. Okay. So that's the third gun in his artillery, the pride of life. The desire, the boasting of what you have or you are or you have done. She sees that the fruit is desirable for gaining wisdom. I can, I can become something. I can know something. I can raise myself to a different stature. I can attain something that I can really boast of. I can be proud of. That's the proud of life. And so Satan appeals to those same three basic desires here. Now as we've seen, those particular desires may not necessarily be sinful. Desire is simply something built into us by God. But each of these temptations is a, a, a perversion, a twisting of that desire to be fulfilled outside the will of God. In a way that is, is not pleasing to God and is outside of his commands. So the Bible says everything that Satan has is disposal, falls into one of those three categories. And he used all three of them on e. He brought up the big guns and used all three of them on her. Interestingly enough, he used the same three on the Lord Jesus in his temptation, didn't he? Matthew four, remember the three things he tempted him to do? Command these stones be made into bread. You fasted forty days, forty nights. You're hungry. Command these stones be made to bread. The lust of the flesh. The desire to fulfill a physical appetite. In Christ case, legitimate physical desire, but to fulfill it at the, the best of Satan outside the will of God, that's, that's sinful. But that's the lust of the flesh. And remember what he had him do? He, he said to give up to the pinnacle of the temple, throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple and the angels will bury you up. Well, that would create quite a stir, wouldn't it? Wow, look at that. Everybody would, would be saying, whoa, look at that. Look at that man. Well, that's the pride of life. The desire to do something that promotes yourself, that builds you up in the eyes of others, that makes you look good, that, that wins the acclaim and applause of the crowd. That's what that was. Pride of life. And then remember the third temptation? He showed him what? Showed him all the kingdoms of the world, right? All the kingdoms of the world, all of this stuff, all the riches, the glory, the pop and circumstance. And he says, I'll give you all that if you just bow down, worship me. That's the lust of the eyes, the desire to have all that stuff that was flashed in front of him there, all those material possessions, lust of the eyes. So same three temptations that, that form the basis of everything Satan uses in this world system. He fired all three of them to get mankind to fall into sin to begin with. And he fired all three of them at Jesus to try to get him to be morally disqualified to be the savior. And of course Jesus rebuffed him all three times by quoting scripture, all three times from look at Deuteronomy. So that's the process of temptation. And the way you see all that throughout scripture helps us to understand the ways in which Satan will attack us as well. So be very careful about those three things. And if you really are on the guard for those three areas of your life, that's going to cover a lot of territory in some way, everything that you can be tempted with. Okay, that's the process of temptation right there in verse six. Those three things question comment. Yes, Bill? Yeah. And in many different variations of those three, it might just take one subset of one of them to get us. You know, so you're right. I mean, obviously he threw everything he had at Eve because of what that meant, you know, for Eve to fall and she's in an innocent state has everything provided by God. So he's got to use that the big guns to get her and it would mean the fall of humanity to get it Christ. What that would mean. He uses everything. You're right. He doesn't have to use that much on us. Typically just a little subset of one of those is usually enough to get us to fall. Good point. Okay, anything else? All right, let's look next at what happens as a result of the fall. First of all, the immediate consequences. There were two immediate consequences as soon as Adam and Eve sinned. These two things happened. The first was a sense of shame. Look at verse seven. 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. Okay, this is a sense of shame and it is seen first of all in the realization of their nakedness. Now why didn't they realize they were naked before? This obviously has something to do with losing their innocence. They were not clothed before but now they realize their nakedness and so they try to cover themselves. They try to clothe themselves with fig leaves. Some have suggested that that may imply that Adam and Eve were somewhat covered maybe by a glow, maybe by a reflection of the glory of God in their innocent state. And when they sinned, they lost that and realized they had no covering anymore. That's not explicitly stated so that's a conjecture but maybe something like that happened. But regardless of exactly how it happened, we know that this means they lost their innocence. They have an awareness that they are naked, they are bare before each other and before God and they make an attempt to cover themselves. Now there's a bigger picture here, isn't there? Sin always leads to shame. Shame always leads to the desire to hide. To cover oneself. Figuratively and literally. Figuratively, what is it that you often say when you do something you're ashamed of? People say, I just wish I could crawl into a hole. You know, that shame leads you to not to want to be noticed by anybody or not to want to be around anybody to cover yourself. That's a natural reaction to shame. You want to stay away from those you've hurt. If you've done something to someone, hurt someone, there's shame involved in that and that shame causes you to pull away from them. That's another form of hiding. It's another form of trying to cover what you've done and you can go a hundred different directions with that. Sin always leads to shame and shame always leads to the desire to cover, to hide and notice it goes even a step further in verse 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. Now evidently God would take on some physical form and walk with them and commune with them in the garden. And when he comes down on this particular day, Adam and Eve hide again an evidence of their shame. They know their guilty and so they hide from God. But the Lord God called to the man verse 9. Where are you? And again, you know God never asks a question for information. He has no lack of knowledge. He knew where they were. God's questions are always desired or designed to stir the heart of the person to whom the question is asked. And so God's questions always are that for that reason to stir the heart of the person to whom God asked the question. So he's really stirring the heart of Adam and Eve. In verse 10 he answered, I heard you in the garden. This is Adam. I heard you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked so I hid and he said, who told you the word naked have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? So they both again hide from God showing their intimate fellowship with him is broken. Again, sin leads to shame, shame leads to a desire to hide not only from others, not only from what we've done, but a desire to hide from God. Now do you find it to be true and you don't need to raise your hand and get personal testimony about this? But do you find it to be true that whenever you sin and the resultant shame comes it usually tends to cause us to run from God? People who are living in sin, especially believers who have a relationship with God, have enjoyed walking with him in the cool of the day in the garden. When they violate God's commands they have a tendency to want to get away from God, to run from God, to hide from God. And so they don't want to be around God's people, they don't want to be in church, they don't want to listen to God speak so they don't, they quit reading the Bible, quit praying, they're running from God. It's a natural result of the fall. It is one of the immediate consequences of sin. A sense of shame which leads to a desire to hide. Yes, I know. Okay, there are people who seem to evidence no shame. So why would that be? Let's think about that a little bit. That's a great question. Why would that be? Consciousseered? Okay, you think maybe there was some shame. The first life they took. Probably, although we may not know, but a continuation of sin has a tendency to seer, to cauterize. The conscience so that it no longer is the voice of God speaking to your heart, stirring up your heart, like Romans 2 says, with your thoughts either accusing or excusing you. Remember we talked about that before, how the conscience works with the heart and the mind. Well, when the conscience is cauterized, it doesn't, the connections are all gone. And so it doesn't work with the mind anymore. So the mind gets messed up. Okay, now you talk a lot about a lot of things that happen in psychology and psychiatry when they deal with mass murderers and serial criminals and that kind of thing. And they recognize what's happened to the mind, but they may not, unless they understand the Bible, understand why? Why that happened? Now there is mental disease, obviously, that may lead to a person not being aware of what they do and so forth. But quite often, I think you've touched on something very basic. And that is that it is a repeated pattern of violating what one knows to be right, doing what is wrong, which seers the conscience and messes up the circuitry that God built into us between the heart and the mind and the conscience. And so they no longer feel any remorse. I think, I think for most people that would be true. Now there may be some people who have certain mental illnesses that they, they might not feel anything at first, but that's that's probably because of a chemical imbalance in the brain or something wrong with them mentally. And for instance, multiple personality disorders, things like that. Yeah, there's there are physical chemical reasons for that. But the average person who is thinking straight, but then eventually gets the point where they have no guilt, no remorse. That's probably how it happened. And so what did God do and we won't get to this tonight because that really dips into the doctor of salvation. But what did God do when he came down later to cover them? Remember? Covered him with the skin of an animal, didn't he? And it is a beautiful picture of the fact that all of our attempts to cover our guilt and shame and sin are abject failures. And only God can cover us by taking the life of an innocent victim. It's a beautiful picture of salvation. All of our man made fig leaves, trying to put stuff together to cover ourselves that work. It's a beautiful picture of the fact that all of man's efforts to cover his sin, to wipe away sin, to get saved on his own are failures. Only God can cover us. And it takes the life of a substitute to do that. Sense of shame. Again, this is so basic. This is basic. We're going to look at this toward the end of our study on what the Bible says about sin. The implications of a biblical doctrine of sin on psychology, on sociology, on several major disciplines. If you come at this from a biblical perspective, boom, the light goes on and you begin to understand what's really going on. And this is so basic and foundational. Not just the biblical truth, but to all truth, the way the world operates, the way human beings operate. This is so basic. Foundational. Sense of shame because of sin. Sense of shame and guilt. Desired of hide and cover that is what happens as a result of sin. This one's going to sound familiar too. If you know anything about people, including yourself, the second immediate consequence is an avoidance of responsibility. And you've heard this before. This gets preached a lot versus 11 through 13. When God asked who told you you were naked, have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? Uh oh, they are caught. Right? God has put his finger right on what they did. But notice the response. Verse 12. The man said, man, you know this is my heart. You can quote it. Right? The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it. Now what's Adam doing? He's making excuse. He's shifting responsibility. He's avoiding his own personal responsibility. He gives the excuse, blaming the woman. But he goes further than that. The woman you gave me. So there's a sense in which he's ultimately blaming God. Okay. It doesn't stop with Eve. He's ultimately blaming God. Okay. Now notice what happens next. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this? You have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate. Now that's true. But she also is shifting responsibility. God didn't ask her how to dishaven. He asked her what have you done? And notice she doesn't answer the right question. She answers the question. How did this happen? That's not what God asked. God asked, what did you do? Personal responsibility. And Eve says, well, it was a service ball. He deceived me. And I ate. So she also shift responsibility. You know, neither one impresses God. I don't see God standing there saying, oh, now I understand. No, I don't. That obviously did not happen as we'll see later when we get to the judgments that come because of of their sin. The only way to deal appropriately with sin is to face up to our responsibility. But we have a natural tendency because we've inherited a sin nature from Adam and Eve. We have a natural tendency to want to shift responsibility. So what do we blame for our sin? Satan, Flip Wilson. That will make me do it. Yeah. We blame Satan. What else do we blame? Pretty long list, isn't everything? Our parents, our childhood, the environment we were raised in, you know, you can go on down the list. Animal instincts, if you believe in evolution, we're just animals anyway. I hope you don't believe in evolution. But those who do trace everything back to the fact that we were born with those animal instincts that we have to overcome. So a lot of stuff is blamed on that. But there are any number of things that we will blame. But you know, anytime you blame heredity, environment, or anything that is supposedly out of your control. I realize there are factors from all those things that can influence us. But when you shift responsibility away from personal responsibility, totally on those things, you're basically saying, you're the problem, God. I had no choice in the home I was born in. I had no choice who my parents were. That was you. You did that, God. The parents, you gave me the home I grew up in that you put me in. You're basically doing the same thing Adam and Eve did. Blaming God. And so we have inherited this tendency. It's a part of the fabric of our sinful nature to try to cover up our sin and our sin. With our own human efforts and avoidance and hiding and to shift responsibility away from ourselves. Rare is the person, especially in the public eye who when they are caught says I was wrong. I was wrong. You hear the blame gain constantly. And we all have a tendency to do that. So again, it's pretty basic. And that this really is an insight into the way our minds work, the way our natures are. And you see it over and over again. Anybody who doesn't counseling sees this all the time. The avoidance of guilt and shame by trying to cover up and the shifting of responsibility. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Nothing new under the sun. If you understand those basic biblical principles, you can see through a lot of what people are doing. When they present to you their issues and problems and you begin to challenge them about things, you can see right through what they're doing. It's the same old thing. Okay. Comments, other questions. Then you want to pursue a little further here. Walt. That's a possibility. That's a possibility. It's difficult to know exactly how everything happened. That phrase though in verse six that he was with her is a telling phrase. Now there are two different interpretations of that. Quite honestly, there's some who say later he was with her and she offered in the fruit. But verse six does seem to imply he was with her when she ate. So coupled with first sympathy to which we saw on Sunday morning a few weeks ago, where the Bible says Adam was not deceived. Eve was deceived. He leads me to believe that Adam's choice was deliberate. Now to ask why did he make that deliberate choice? Some suggest well he did it out of love for Eve. He knew what she had done. She was going to die now. He didn't want to lose her. He makes the choice. I'm going to die with her. That's possible. But it is also possible exactly what you said. Maybe the same thing was in his mind. And so he of he he of neglected his responsibility to provide the leadership that got it entrusted him with. If he was there when she took of it. Yes. Yes, he could have prevented it. Possibly. Yeah. There are a lot of possibilities to go with that. Steve. Maybe we should stay away from. But yeah, it's hard to know exactly what all is happening here. But it's clear from first sympathy to that Adam is held responsible for sin and Romans five because he deliberately chose to sin. Eve was deceived. There's a difference there. And so that's the reason why Adam is is held responsible for man sin and Romans five. No, there really isn't because all that happens after this the curse would there have been a curse only half of nature or anything he did would have been messed up. But Adam could have grown great crops with note this old and thorns. It's all conjecture and we can't really figure that world out. Yeah. Yeah. Bob. Again, we don't we don't really know, but that's a that is a possibility. We don't know how long Adam and Eve lived before the fall. So we don't know whether there was more than one attempt by Satan to to get her to deceive her. One one thing that kind of argues for the fact that it wasn't a long period of time is they had no children yet. And in a perfect world, they would have had children fairly quickly, you would think or she would have been expecting fairly quickly. So, you know, that may argue against there being a long period of time, but was there a few days. I don't know. There may have been more than may have been more than one attempt. It's hard to tell. Okay. Good. Good thinking. Now, right. Obviously, God would not need any more people or anything else. Everything's perfect, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have had children. You know, well, that's a that's a question I have never considered before, but I'm trying to think, is there any is there any reason why they would not have had children? I can't think of any. I'm be, you know, what was that God told them, yeah, Genesis one God told them be fruitful multiply field the earth so they would have had children anyway. That was before the fall. So they they would have had children even in their unfallen state. Now, that was before. So that's a great question. I have to catalog that one. Remember that one. Okay. All right. Let's let's we've got a few minutes. Let's at least get started into the far reaching judgments because of the fall. And these are, you know, the two we just saw are immediate, even though we do the same things, those were immediate results for Adam and Eve, but these next ones are a part of what we typically call the curse. The curse is God's judgment far reaching judgments pronounced because of Adam and Eve sin. And first one is on the snake. And this is interesting. Look at verse 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. So in this particular scenario, in this case, the snake, the serpent is cursed. There's something about his form and his movements that are changed as a part of the curse. The fact that that as part of the curse, he will crawl on his belly leads some to believe that the snake was an upright creature before the fall before the curse, which may may be true. It certainly seems to imply that the idea that he would as he crawls on his belly, you will eat the dust, eat dust all the days of your life. That's a sign of humiliation. So the serpent is being judged cursed by God, humbled by God, eating dust throughout the Bible is a symbol of humiliation. Now the real question that puzzles people here and maybe some of you are thinking, why would God judge a creature that is not morally responsible? Animals are not morally responsible. Yes, Satan used a crafty animal, but the animal left to itself would not make those kind of moral judgments. Why would God judge the snake to keep Satan from using it again? Possibly. It is a question that has puzzled Bible commentators from the beginning. I really like the answer that the old Lutheran German expositor, H.C. Lupeld, gives in his two-volume commentary on Genesis. He says the question is bound to arise. Why would an un-moral, and he uses some older language, why would an un-moral and therefore irresponsible agent be singled out for punishment? Here's his answer. I really like what he says. Strictly speaking, this is not so much punishment on the snake. As emphasis upon the defeat and humiliation of the old evil foe of Satan himself, and he goes on to explain why the two are connected. To make his failure, Satan's failure, as apparent as possible, he as well as the irresponsible agent that he employed will be crushed in a joint overthrow. He gives several parallels in the Bible, which is I think he's making a compelling argument. In the Bible in Genesis 9 and Exodus 21, an animal that kills a man is commanded to be destroyed. In Genesis 6, the flood, in the destruction of mankind, the rest of the creature world also perishes. They all go down together, if you will. He uses the example of Akin. If you read Judges 7, remember when Akin was killed, put to death because of his taking of the goods that God had said you're not supposed to take the battle of Jericho. Not only was he and his family, not only were their lives taken, but all their livestock, all their animals. Also. So he says this. He says this makes the seriousness of God's punishment more drastically apparent. Since the rest of the creature world exists for man's sake, its destruction may serve a salutory purpose for man. And then he says he quotes Chrysostom, who is an old church father from like the 400s. John Chrysostom is a nickname that was given to him. He's golden mouth. He was the greatest preacher of his day. And he said this in his commentary on Genesis 1500 years ago. God destroys the instrument that brought his creature to fall. And here's the quote. Just as a loving father, when punishing the murderer of his son might snap into the sword or dagger with which the murder has been committed. That makes a lot of sense. There's a sense in which the two are united in what has happened. And so God just groups them as he does at the flood, as he does with Akin, as he does in other places in the Bible. The instrument that is used is also destroyed with the moral agent that used that instrument. And so maybe that's why the snake is cursed. Any other suggestions or thoughts? Well, beautiful creature. Maybe we would be riding snakes rather than horses today if this hadn't happened. Who knows? Okay, our time is up. The kids are getting out of a want us. So we need to go. We're really just getting into the meat of what happens when when God curses Satan and then pronounces judgment upon the even woman, women, even women and nature and men. That's the real crux of the curse. We'll get to that next week. Father, thank you for the opportunity to get into your word and study your word. You've told us to study, to grow in the knowledge of our Savior, to study to show ourselves approved one that rightly divides the word. So we thank you for the opportunity to do that tonight. We pray that that you'll bless us that we will take whatever knowledge we we gain not to not to be guilty of the pride of life. What a tragedy that would be, Lord, not to be help us not to be proud of any knowledge we gain, but use that knowledge to draw closer to you and to help others do the same. To recognize the forms of temptation that Satan uses, to recognize the ways that we respond to sin and ways that just show we came from Adam and that's our simple nature at work. So help us to use what we learn to help us draw closer to you and to live more godly lives and thus impact our world in a much more powerful way in Jesus' name, amen.