The book of Genesis contains
so much doctrine of God's purpose for this world, and His glory. It's overwhelming to find in
the book of Genesis everything that God really expands on throughout
the rest of Scripture. But I want to turn to the book
of Genesis first. We're going to read there. But
before we read in Genesis, we're going to start in chapter 3,
and we're going to read the first 21 verses. Before we read in
those verses, I also want to turn to the book of Romans. So
hold your finger there in Genesis. Turn to the book of Romans, chapter
5. I want to read two verses there. Next week I hope to bring
a message from John, the book of John, chapter 3, because it
fits in with what we're studying in Genesis. So next week we're
going to try to look at John chapter 3, the first 16 verses
there. But anyway, back in Romans, chapter
5. A couple of verses I want you
to look at with me there. The first one is verse 12, Romans
chapter 5, verse 12. This is a verse that explains
so much. And now look at verse 19 of the same chapter. For as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous." Those two verses should anchor our thoughts
in the book of Genesis in chapter 3. Now, I'm going to read through
these first 21 verses in Genesis chapter 3, but before I do, I
want to give you a basic outline, so that as we read through this,
you'll see how they fit together. First of all, remember God has
just created the world, and He created man last, and created
the woman out of the man, and put them in a garden, and in
the garden He gave them everything. He gave them the fruit of every
tree to eat, except one, and He gave them dominion over all
things, the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and the
beasts of the field. Everything was put in subjection
to man. And so you can see the blessings
that God lavished upon Adam and Eve. And then we come to chapter
3. Now, what we see here in the
outline is that there's a tremendous blessing that God has laid out
in the first two chapters of Genesis. The blessings that God
has in creation and the foreshadowing of what that would mean in our
salvation. But then we see that God, after
God creates Adam and Eve and puts them in the garden and blesses
them so much, He gives them one command. And it was a prohibition. Don't eat of one tree. Just one
command, one tree, don't eat. And then there was a temptation.
And in the temptation there was a fall. And after the fall there
was a judgment by God made. And then God himself preaches
the first sermon. He preaches the gospel in the
Lord Jesus Christ. So the gospel is preached by
God to them, promises are made, and then a covering is provided. That's the redemption, the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we see in all this the
glory of God. So, look at how the pattern flows
through the Bible, through the book of Genesis here. God makes
known His goodness in creation and His power and His sovereignty
over all things. He blesses man and puts him in
a place of preeminence. And then He puts a condition
upon man, and man falls and falls miserably. And it's a sad thing. It explains so much. And then
God makes this judgment, preaches the gospel, reveals redemption
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and makes known His glory. Here we
see God's goodness, man's sinfulness, and God's glory manifested. In spite of, in fact, on the
top of the ruins of man's sin. So now, with that as sort of
an overview and a summary of all the Bible teaches, let's
look at chapter 3, because understanding Genesis chapter 3 helps us to
understand why things are as they are in the world. It helps
us to understand what we are. It helps us to understand who
Satan is, what evil is in the world, and how we're delivered
from it, and how we are made right with God. It's all here
in the book of Genesis, chapter 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was
more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God
had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea,
hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, God hath said, You shall not eat
of it, neither shall you touch it lest you die. And the serpent
said unto the woman, You shall not surely die. For God doth
know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her,
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord
God amongst the trees of the garden. Listen to this grace
from God. And the Lord God called unto
Adam and said to him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy
voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked,
and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that
thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The
woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the
woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said,
The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said
unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy
belly shalt thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of
thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, And
thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because
thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten
of the tree which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not
eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt
thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of
the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it
wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return. And Adam called his wife's name
Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also
and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and
clothed them." There's so much here, isn't there? We could probably
spend 10 Sundays just on these few verses, but I'll try to cover
much more than that today. First thing we see here is there
was something that God had said, a command was given. Now, they
had been given everything. Adam and Eve had been given everything.
They had been given life. God created Adam out of the dust
of the ground and set him as preeminent over all of creation.
And then he gave Adam a wife, formed that woman out of his
own side and made her one. Bone of his bone, flesh of his
flesh. Someone he could love, someone
he could look upon and delight in. And someone who could look
upon him and commune with him and delight in him. She was made
for the man. What a blessing, all that God
had given to them. And then God gave them one thing.
In a garden with all the trees, everything provided possible. And God said, one thing, one
thing you're not to do, do not eat of that one tree, the tree
of knowledge of good and evil. And then the temptation comes. The two are innocent. The two
have never sinned. They're unclothed and yet they're
not ashamed because they had never committed any sin. They were unclothed because they
yet had to produce any righteousness either. But still they were unclothed,
innocent, naked before God, and not ashamed. And God gives Adam
this one command, and to Eve also, do not eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet there was another tree
there, the tree of life. They were to freely eat of all
the trees, including that tree. They never ate from the tree
of life. They never ate from that tree. If they would have
eaten from that tree, they would have lived forever. But they
did not eat of that tree. You ever wonder why they didn't
eat from that tree? I think the reason is, explained
later throughout scripture, because they didn't yet have a need.
They didn't realize their need for eternal life. They did not
yet have a need to take of that tree. And those two trees really
represent a significant thing, which I'm going to get into in
a moment. But first, I want to look at this temptation. Without
a trial, without a test, there was no obedience. God gave the
command, but until there was a A command given, there was
no obedience on Adam and Eve's part. They had been given everything,
but yet they had not yet been tried. It says in Romans chapter
4 that without law there is no transgression. Until God gives
a law, there can be no sin. And so before the law was given,
sin couldn't have entered into the world. But when God gave
the law, Then Adam had to obey it. And God is the one who's
sovereign. God is the one who is the authority.
We have to give an account to Him. He made us. He made us for
Himself. He made us for His glory. And
yet we've all fallen from that glory because we've failed to
give to God His due. We have failed to glorify the
one who gave us all things. And now we see the temptation.
Here's the test. It says in verse 1, the serpent
was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God
had made. Now the serpent was just a beast, but Satan had entered
into the serpent. He himself had taken on the form
of a serpent. And because Satan had entered
the serpent, then the serpent became wise to evil above all
the other beasts of the field. And the serpent retained that
that foul name throughout history. Everyone despises serpents. Women fear them. And men do too,
because they're a terrible thing. We kill them. Serpents are a
bad thing, just in that sense, on a physical level. But this
serpent was special because in this particular serpent, this
devil had come. Just like in the New Testament,
when Devils possessed children or mothers or fathers. You see
those people taking on the characteristics of the devil. They couldn't hear,
they couldn't talk, they threw themselves into the fire, they
tried to destroy themselves. That was the effect of the devil
in those people. But here, the serpent takes on
the characteristics of Satan. Now the serpent was more subtle
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. It means
that Satan himself is the most crafty, the most evil of all
of God's creatures. And so he set out to deceive
the woman, and he had a strategy that was very crafty. He knew
that he couldn't attack, it would be difficult for him to attack
Adam directly. So what did he do? He tried to
deceive the woman. Because he knew if he could deceive
the woman and get her to fall into sin, then it would put Adam
in a most difficult circumstance. Because Adam loved his own wife. She was bone of his bone, flesh
of his flesh. And that's the strategy he used
here. I'll attack the weaker vessel.
And so he says here, he comes to her. And how does the serpent
work? What is his strategy? What is
his method? How does he get himself into
the world today? Into our minds? And how does
he try to thwart God's plan? How does he separate people from
God? How does he do that? There are
three things that he does in this temptation. Look at the
first thing he does. He says to the woman, Yea, hath
God said. The first thing the devil does
is attack God's Word. Why is that so significant? Because
the Word of God is the only way that we know truth. The Word
of God is the revelation of God Himself. Without the Word of
God, we know nothing that's true. And so, Satan attacks the Word
of God. He says, Yea, hath God said?
And then he says this in his question to Eve, You shall not
eat of every tree of the garden? Or in other words, did he say
you weren't to eat of any tree of the garden? Why would the
devil say that? Why would he cast doubt in the
woman's mind that God had said, you can eat of every tree, but
not one? He didn't ask that. Did he say
you couldn't eat of every tree? Amazing! Why would God restrict
you from eating of every tree in the garden? So he engaged
Eve in a way that first cast doubt on God's word, and then
the second thing he did was he cast doubt on God's goodness. God had given them everything.
He had given them every tree. He only restricted one tree from
them. And yet the devil attacks the
goodness of God to them. You shall not eat of every tree
of the garden. And so the woman responds. She says, To the serpent,
we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. In other
words, we can eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. We're
not restricted from eating from every tree. But of the fruit
of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said,
you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you
die. Now this wasn't an exact quotation of what God said over
in chapter 2. The Lord said in chapter 2, He
says in verse 16 and 17, He says, She doesn't quote it exactly,
but it's pretty close. It's close enough. Some people say, well, see, she
added to the Word of God here, because she said, neither shall
you touch it, lest you die. Or, not surely die, but per adventure
you shall die. But actually, it's not that far
off. It's close enough that she accurately
conveys to the devil, we're not to eat of one tree. Every other
tree we can eat of. And if we don't, and if we do
eat of that one tree, we'll die. She understood God's word clearly.
It was a simple command. Why would the devil raise a question
about something so simple and clear? That's his way. To distort,
and to cast doubt on God's word, and then to cast doubt on God's
goodness. And listen to what he does next,
verse 4. And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not
surely die. Now that was a blatant, open
attack on the truth of God. See how he moves from casting
doubt, distorting, and then casting doubt on God's goodness to an
open attack on God's truth? You shall not surely die. Not
surely die? That's a denial of God's holiness. That's a denial of God's justice. What do you mean you're not going
to surely die? You're saying that God doesn't have to be just.
And so in verse 5, it says, the serpent is continuing, he says,
Now the temptation comes directly to Eve. He appeals to her desire to be
better than what she was, better than what God had given her.
He appeals to her lust to have something, to covet after something
God had not given to her. And that something was to have
a greater knowledge, a knowledge of good and evil, in order that
she might be like God. That's pride. That's lust. It's
a lust after a desire to be like God. To go beyond what God has
said. You know what it is when you
go to a place and someone's land is marked off with a fence and
there's signs that says, what does it say on the signs? No
trespassing. No crossing the boundary. God
had put the boundary there. Do not cross the boundary. But in crossing that boundary,
they trespassed against God. It's called sin. Transgression
of the law. And so he says, God knows that
when you eat of this tree, your eyes are going to be opened and
you're going to be as gods, knowing good and evil. Now it's true
that they knew something about good and evil when they ate of
this tree. But it's not true that that was
a knowledge that was beneficial. It was not true that it was good
for them to eat of that tree. And so when it says in the next
verse, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired
to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.
So she looked at the tree. She saw that it was good for
food, pleasant to the eyes, and desired to make one wise. She
reasoned. She reasoned against the clear
revelation of God. She thought about it, and she
thought, God has prohibited it. Yet, as I think about it, it
doesn't make sense that he would keep this from me and keep this
from Adam. So she looked at it. She said,
it's food. It's food. Why would God have created food
if he didn't mean for us to eat it? And it looks beautiful. It's desirable to the eyes. And
beyond all that, it will make us wise. Wise. But what kind of a wisdom? A
wisdom of good and evil. How did this tree give them that
knowledge? Was there benefit in that knowledge? Listen to
what happened. And so she ate, and she gave
also to her husband with her, and he did eat. Now he might
not have been immediately with her in front of the tree, but
her husband who was with her in the garden. I think that he
wasn't with her at this time because there was no communication
between the devil and Adam. And Adam, if he would have been
there, no doubt he would have made some comment. But he made
none. And she didn't appeal to Adam
for help or advice or counsel against God's purpose for the
woman. But she gave to her husband.
And then here's the fall of Adam. And he did eat. What did Adam
do? He listened to the voice of his
wife. Here she had eaten of the tree.
God had told them, no, eat. In the day you eat, you shall
surely die. And he, she gives it to him. She has eaten of it. Look, I
ate. I'm not, nothing's happened.
He could have reasoned at that point many things. I think the
most significant thing that he would have thought at that point
is, my wife has eaten of this tree? She's going to surely die. This was the temptation for Adam. What am I going to do? My wife
has sinned. God has told us she's going to
surely die. What shall I do? Adam was created
as the representative head. He was the covenant head of all
of his people who would be born to him, which includes the entire
human race. Everyone born into this world
is born to Adam. And everyone was represented
in him. So when he ate of this tree,
when he ate the fruit his wife gave to him, when he committed
sin against God, when he disobeyed, many were made sinners. That means they were not made
sinners in that they were forced into sin. It means that God charged
them. He imputed the disobedience of
Adam to them so that it was their disobedience. What Adam did became
their sin. because they were in Adam. Now
this is something that's difficult for us to grasp because we don't
deal with these things like this in our day too much. At least
we don't when we first think about it. If someone disobeys
the law, we hold them individually responsible, don't we? And that's
the way God dealt with all the angels who sinned. Every angel
was individually held responsible and those that sinned fell. and
those that God preserved from sinning didn't fall. Those who
didn't fall were kept to life eternal, but those who fell,
they were consigned forever under the punishment of God. But here
we have a different situation with mankind. God didn't create
them all individually, as He did the angels, and each one
individually had to answer to God in this one sin. No, He created them all when
He created Adam. Because out of Adam came every
person. So in Psalm 51 verse 3, David
prays to the Lord about his own sin. He says, I was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. In other words,
Adam's sin, not only the guilt of it became ours, but the corruption
of Adam's nature was transmitted to us through the process of
our being born into this world. Every person born into this world
is made a sinner. And this explains so much. This
explains so much. And this last week has been one
of those weeks where these things are brought to our attention
through the providence of God. You see these things in the world.
One of the things that came into the news this week was the shooting
in Florida. A horrible thing. And people
would naturally want to ask, why did this happen? People ask
that. We should ask that. It's meant
for us to ask that. Trouble in our lives are meant
for us to ask, why does this happen? When we look at a person
who's died and here we're holding a memorial service or a funeral
service, we look at this person and we think, this is not the
way it was designed to be. Something happened. God created
man upright. And they have sought out every
invention. Ecclesiastes 7.29. But the Lord
explains the condition of man in this world through this one
chapter. Why is there evil in the world? Why is there death? Why is there
sorrow? Why are there thorns? Why does
man labor his whole life just to eat, and then at the end of
it, he dies? It's explained right here. By
one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And as I read a moment ago in
Romans 5.19, "...for as by one man's disobedience many were
made sinners." That's the tragedy of it. And that's the situation. And if we just restrict ourselves
to looking at man here, it's very depressing. It's discouraging. It's hopeless. It's ruin. It's
darkness. It's bad. It's really bad. And there's no good news in this
at all. As a kid, I would always wonder,
why? Why did they do this? Why did they do this? But this
week I was confronted not only with the case in Florida, but
also with another case, as I stood and talked with a person this
week who was intoxicated, someone I care about, someone I really
wanted to explain the gospel to, and I found that with all
that I prayed, Lord, give me wisdom, and tried to explain
things clearly, and yet I couldn't penetrate. There was a confusion
of truth. There was a lashing out in anger. There was pride thinking, I know
the truth, and yet there was a denial of the truth. In the
same words, it was all mixed together, ruin and misery and
sorrow. And not only the plight of man,
but this honor it brought to God. Adam, by his sin, showed
many things. He distrusted God. He distrusted
God. He wouldn't bow and submit to
God's sovereign authority. He treated God's truth as if
it wasn't important. He neglected God's judgment.
He just acted as if God's judgment was going to mean nothing. All the love that God had shown
to him in Eve, he disregarded it. He didn't bring glory to
God because of his love, because of his goodness. He didn't honor
God's truth. He cast it all to the ground.
He despised God's authority and rejected it and rebelled against
God. That was his sin. All of it was
mixed up. In that one sin, he broke every
commandment of God. And all of his children. What
a sin, that one sin. That one sin would bring sin
and death on the whole race of all of Adam's posterity. That's
a terrible thing, isn't it? And so it says in verse 7, "...and
the eyes of them both were opened." Here you go, here's what Satan
promised, you'll know good and evil. They were opened and they
knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves aprons. Here we see the great sorrow.
They saw that they were naked. Now they know the good and evil
that the devil promised them. The evil was that we're guilty
before God. We're corrupt before God. We're
ashamed before God. We now fear God. We've lost this sweet communion
with God, our Creator. We've defiled ourselves. We've
fallen from what we were. And they knew something about
good in that they lost the goodness. They lost all the blessings of
God. This is the knowledge of good
and evil that they sought after? And the consequences go on. Because they made themselves
aprons. No man can stand to look at his
own shame and sin. So they try to hide it. We try
to cover it up. And the cover-up goes on, goes
on even in our day. We don't want other people to
see it. We can't face it ourselves. We can't even confess our sins
before God. We can't even admit to ourselves
what we are. And so they made themselves aprons
to hide their nakedness. Now their guilt made their nakedness
appear shameful. And so it says in verse 8, Now
we hear the voice of the Lord God. He says, and they heard
the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of
the day. What is the voice of the Lord
God? Who is the voice of the Lord God? Who is it that is called
in scripture the Word of God? And who is himself God? Isn't
it the Lord Jesus Christ, the Living Word? He himself is the
only one by whom we can know God. He is the image of the invisible
God. Colossians 1, 15 and 16. He's the only way we can know
God. He says that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
So this is an anticipation of the Lord Jesus Christ coming
into this world. He enters into the garden in
the cool of the day. And He speaks. And notice how
He speaks. First, Adam and Eve hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the
garden. Shame, cover-up, hiding, these
were things they previously knew nothing. Did they make themselves
gods? No. They fell in their sin, and
so they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. The only
one who was good, the only one who loved them, the only one
who, the one in whose hand their life and breath was, and all
their ways were in his hands, and they didn't want to be in
his presence. They couldn't bear the thought.
Sin had separated them in their mind and conscience from the
Lord who made them. They were made enemies of God
in their minds now. They were afraid of God and they
hid themselves. Verse 9. And the Lord God called
unto Adam and said, Where art thou? He was hiding behind the
trees. Why would you be hiding? Where
are you? God calls. Have you ever noticed
in scripture when the Lord speaks to men, even in their guilt,
He's very calm. He doesn't... searched for something
to say. His words are always clear and
they're directly to the point and always opens up the case
in all of its truth, so there's no hiding. Where are you? That
one question put Adam in the accountability seat. He had to
give an account of himself to God. And so he says here in verse
10, and he said, I heard thy voice in the garden. And I was
afraid. Why would you be afraid of God's
voice? This is what sin does. It makes us afraid of God. You know what grace does? Have
you ever noticed in the epistles, of all the epistles of the New
Testament, it always opens this way. Grace and peace. to you from God our Father and
from the Lord Jesus Christ." Why is it always in that order?
Grace and peace. Because grace is the beginning.
Grace is what moved God. Grace is what caused God to act. What caused God to work and come
to man and reconcile them to himself. And peace is the end
result of God's work. Grace and peace. But here we
have the result of sin. Fear and hiding. And the Lord
is opening it up, He's convincing them, He's making it, He's exposing
it. This is the work that has to
precede the Gospel. Remember in Romans chapter 1,
verse 1, First God's wrath and our guilt
are made clear. Ungodly. Unrighteous. And then
the gospel is able to be received. Then the tree of life looks very
attractive. And he said, I heard thy voice
in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid
myself. Notice he didn't say, I disobeyed. Your one command against light,
against your goodness, against your authority, against all of
your truth and justice, in the face of all that, I sinned against
God. He didn't say it like that. He
just said, he talked about what he felt. I was afraid because
I was naked. And I hid myself. There's almost
a sense in where he's saying, I was naked because I didn't
have any clothing. So I went and I made this clothing.
But his clothing didn't help, did it? The aprons didn't make
him feel comfortable. Because all that we do cannot
help our conscience. And if it does, it's God's wrath
against us. God, in mercy, will keep our
conscience open until the gospel comes to heal us. In verse 11
he says, the Lord said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Now
he gets to the point, Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldst not eat? Well, he could have just said
yes, but he didn't. What does he do? He's still under
the guilt of his sin and the shame of his sin and he has no
way out. So what does he do? He looks
for excuses. And who does he look at? His
own beloved wife. He not only shifts the blame
from himself, But he accuses his wife, and in accusing his
wife, he doesn't stop there. He brings the accusation all
the way to God. He says this, "'Who told thee
that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?' And the man said, "'The
woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat.'" What a... a low point this is in Adam's
sin, isn't it? The very one that he loved as
his own flesh and blood. And the God who created him,
now he's on the defense and he lashes out against her and against
God. That's what sin does. It creates
this enmity in our minds against God and against one another.
Titus 3.3 says it this way. We also were sometimes foolish,
disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living
in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after
that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared,
not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing
of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ our Lord, that being justified by his grace we might be made
heirs That's the gospel, isn't it? It comes to us in our sin. And here the Lord is asking the
questions. Holding them to account. Showing
them their guilt. And then He's going to pronounce
the judgment. He says He's going down the ladder. First with Adam.
What have you done? Have you eaten the woman that
you gave me? She gave me that fruit and I
ate it. And so the Lord doesn't argue with Adam. And so he says
in verse 13, And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is
this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent
beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the
serpent, Because thou hast done this. Now he starts at the bottom
of the chain. Thou art cursed. God cursed the
devil. And he cursed the animal the
devil used in the process. You're cursed above all cattle,
above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go,
and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. The devil will
be cursed below everything." He was made originally in his
created state above all the angels, and then he fell to the point
where he's below all the angels. It says, I think in the book
of Isaiah, that the men, when God judges Satan, will narrowly
look at him and say, is this the man? The cause of the world? To sin? Words to that effect? Yes, that's Him. And so, then
comes the gospel. Now we've got the judgment. Now
the sin is laid bare and the guilt is assigned. And now the
gospel comes in the promise of God. Listen to this in verse
15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman... Now He's
speaking to the serpent now. But he's also speaking to Adam
and Eve. And he's speaking beyond Adam and Eve. He says, I will
put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed,
the seed of the serpent, and her seed, and it, the seed of
the woman, shall bruise thy head, the serpent, and thou, the serpent,
shall bruise his heel, the seed of the woman. You see that? Who
is the seed of the woman? Well, this is the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the seed. He was promised here in Genesis
3.15. Later God promises to Abraham. He says, "...and in thy seed
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." That was the
seed. And the seed means the offspring,
the one who would come through. The seed of the woman meant that
the Lord Jesus Christ would be coming into this world born,
not of Adam, but of a woman. Of a woman. Remember what it
says in Galatians 4? Turn to Galatians 4 so we can
take a look at that. This is what the Lord says in
Galatians 4 about our Savior. This is why this is a promise.
And there's much to be said about this throughout the Bible. Galatians chapter 4. He says,
I'll read the first six verses. He says, now I say, this is Paul
the Apostle speaking to the Galatians, and he's going to bring up an
analogy between the way that parents treat their sons, or
a father especially treats his son who's young, and what happens
as that son matures. He says, now I say, that the
heir, the son of the father, as long as he is a child, differeth
nothing from a servant. Though he be Lord of all, by
his birth he is heir and Lord of all, but he is treated as
a servant." In verse 2, "...but is under tutors and governors
until the time appointed of the father." So what does the father
do? When his son is very young, he
puts a tutor and a governor over him in order to instruct him
and make him obey. He has to obey. He puts someone
over there that is going to enforce the rules. So he grows up under
the rules. under the law, if you will, of
his father. Verse 3, "...even so we..." Now
he brings the comparison to the Galatians and all believers.
He says, "...even so we, when we were children, were in bondage
under the elements of the world." The elements of the world are
those things that God has put us under in this world, which
He later explains to be the law of God. But when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son. Now this is amazing. You know the pattern now. The
Father has a Son. He's heir and Lord of all. And
yet the Father puts Him as a servant under tutors and governors, under
the law. And He says, but when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law. Why was the Son of God made under
the law? He who is equal with the Father.
Because this was God's eternal purpose. This was the way He
was going to redeem His people. He goes on, He says, He was made
under the law in order that He might redeem them that were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." So here
we see another head, another representative head, another
covenant head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Not Adam, but Him. And here in Christ, who was brought
into this world, the seed of the woman, He was born of a woman.
And He was made under the law. Why was He made under the law?
In order that He might redeem. What does that mean? He had to
fulfill the law. He had to obey the law and keep
the law. Adam was given one commandment,
and he broke it. Christ was given the entire law
to do it, and he fulfilled it. Adam, one sin. Many were made
sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ, by his
one obedience unto death, Many are made righteous. You see the
comparison? Two men, two people, all of Adam's
descendants fell on Adam. And all those born to the Lord
Jesus Christ, who were in him when he went to the cross, who
died with him, who were buried with him, and who rose with him
as their covenant head, now they're seated in heavenly places in
Christ. There were two men God created.
in this world to represent all men. One was of the earth, earthly. The other was the Lord from heaven.
1 Corinthians 15 verse 46 and 47. The Lord from heaven is the
Lord Jesus Christ. He wasn't born into this world
and began to exist then. He was born because He came from
heaven. God's own Son came from heaven
and was born of a woman. And as a man He became a servant. He was the Son of God and yet
He served. How did He serve? He bore everything
that God required of His people. He was made a surety for them,
so that He acted in their place. Everything God obligated them
to do, He fulfilled. And all the punishment God would
have poured out on them for their sin, He took their sin and endured
it. That's what a surety does. He
comes before the justice of God and hears every accusation against
his people and then he owns it. He owns the accusation and he
says, I was made surety for them. And he answers with himself and
he takes their obligation and he's made under the law as a
servant and he fulfills the law. And then at the end, in full
obedience to his father, that obedience that even took him
to suffer and death, to suffering and death, that obedience. And in his suffering and death,
he not only fulfilled the obedience required of the law, but he made
full satisfaction to God's law for his people because of their
sins. And his blood was the ransom
price paid in order that God might set free his people from
the condemnation and death their sins had earned. That's what
God is saying here in Galatians 4. So let's read it again in
verse 4. He says, "...but when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons, in order that God might
make us His sons." The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was made A servant, in order that we,
who had fallen in Adam, might be made his sons. And he actually
accomplished it too, because he says here in verse 6, and
because you are sons. How were we made sons? Well,
first God chose us to be his sons. Ephesians 1, 4, and 5 says
that he did this before the foundation of the world. In the Lord Jesus
Christ. In fact, look at Ephesians chapter
1. Before we just jump over that very quickly, he says in Ephesians
chapter 1, he says... In verse 3, blessed be God the
Father, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians
1 verse 3. Who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Where? In Christ. Why does he use those words,
in Christ? Well, because we were in Adam. We had to be in Christ in order
for the blessings of God to be given us, because we were in
Adam, we were condemned, we were judged, we were under the sentence
of death. We had to be put into another
head, another representative, our surety, the Lord Jesus Christ.
One who could stand as our mediator. So he says he's given us all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Well how did
this come to be? Verse 4 says so. According as
he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blame before him in love. having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise
of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved in whom in Christ we have redemption through his blood
the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace you
see the redemption the Lord God The Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ chose His people in His Son. And He chose them for this
purpose that they might be holy and without blame before Him
in love. And He blessed them according
to that choice with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
as our Mediator, as our High Priest, As our second and last
Adam fulfilled all that God required, he didn't fall, he fulfilled
it all. He started with a deficit, the
sins of his people, and yet he obeyed God and satisfied for
those sins. And so God blessed him with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places, sat him on his own throne.
And the Lord Jesus, us being in Him, are given all blessings.
We're chosen by God to be His sons. And the Lord Jesus redeemed
us by His blood. Now, going back to Galatians
4 verse 6, He says, And because you are sons, God has sent forth
the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father,
My Father, This is what our Lord said to His Father when He was
under the trial in Gethsemane. He said, Abba, Father, all things
are possible for Thee. Remove this cup from Me, nevertheless
not My will but Thine be done. Abba, Father, our Father is the
Father, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God in our nature. in our nature. What a wonderful
redemption. The Spirit of God comes to dwell
in sinners. But they're sinners in themselves.
But in Christ, they're holy and without blame, before God in
love, so that they're redeemed by His blood. All their sins
are washed from them. And before God, they stand in
His perfect righteousness. Therefore, the Spirit of God
can come into them and dwell in them and give them a new nature,
even the nature of their Lord. The Lord Jesus, a divine nature,
a nature in which we can know God and believe God and walk
by faith in Him. And look to Him, because we look
in hope that we will be with Him in glory and see His face.
And so back to Genesis chapter 3. That's the promise. This is the gospel. God preached
the first sermon. The two were guilty. And He speaks
of His Son. Because the gospel always shuts
us up to our own guilt and corruption and helplessness. And then lifts
up the Lord Jesus Christ and points us to Him. The woman I
was talking to this week, I felt so sorry for her. But I could
not help her. Why? Because the gospel had to
enter into her heart, which is the power of God to salvation.
God has to open her eyes, her spiritual eyes, in order to show
her Christ, and in showing her Christ, live to God. Isn't that
what Jesus said in Isaiah 45, 22? Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.
So he says in verse 16, under the woman he said, I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall
rule over thee. We saw that last week. This is the misery that
the woman would have to suffer through in childbearing and being
in subjection to her husband. It's not a miserable thing when
we do it with an eye to the representation that that marriage teaches us.
Because the church is subject to Christ in everything. Every
believer wants to be obedient to Christ and listens to His
word. and wants to be conformed to
His image and prays toward that, oh, that I might be found in
Christ, Paul says, that I might be conformed to His sufferings
and all these things. We want to be like our Savior.
We want a heart that beats with His heart. And so the woman is
then subjected to her husband, even as the church is in subjection
to Christ. And then to Adam, Verse 17, God
said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and
hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou
shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow
thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the
herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it
thou wast taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt
return." Now, if you just stop there and read that, you'll say,
well, yeah, you can see all the trouble we have. I gotta go to
work, I gotta come home, I'm tired, I go to bed, I get up,
and next day I do it again, and I just keep repeating this over
and over again, and then I fall into the grave. I'm just tired. But that's not what God is, that's
not the end of this. I want you to see that the Lord,
that even Adam in his sin here reflects a greater glory on our
Savior. Because here it says, God said
to Adam, because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife and
have eaten of the tree I commanded you not to eat of, cursed is
the ground for thy sake. In sorrow thou shalt eat of it
till all the days of thy life. Who in Scripture is called the
man of sorrows? In Isaiah 53, it's the Lord Jesus
Christ, isn't it? He's the man of sorrows. And
who is it that wore the crown of thorns? Isn't it the Lord,
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? And who is it that sweat great
drops of blood in the garden? And in his sweat, he was laboring. Not just with the sweat of his
brow, but with the blood that came out of his skin. Because
his heart was laboring to have his wife, his people, to pay
for their sins. Bearing those sins in the guilt
and shame and the punishment of them before God. When he took
that cup in the garden, as it were, it wasn't a physical cup,
but it was a cup of suffering. And he said, Let this cup pass from me." But
then he said, but not my will, but thine be done. Here we see
the Lord Jesus Christ, unlike Adam, submitting himself to the
authority of his father. This is amazing, as a servant.
And here we see that Adam had to return to the dust of the
ground, for out of it he was taken. Who was laid in the grave? Who was it that was higher than
the heavens, equal with God, made himself of no reputation,
took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men, even the likeness of sinful flesh, and took upon him
their sins, and answered for it too, and satisfied God, and
magnified His law, and glorified His justice, and made known his
love and gave a way for his grace to come to save sinners, the
Lord Jesus. And Adam called his wife's name
Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord Jesus
Christ calls his people, my people, my church. He loved the church
and gave himself for it. And what is the church called
in Galatians? The mother of us all. The New
Jerusalem, that's the church. You're not coming to Mount Zion.
I mean, you're not coming to Sinai. You're coming to Mount
Zion, the city of the living God. And unto Adam also and to
his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. Where did these skins come from?
Well, they came from animals. What happened to the animals?
They had to die, didn't they? Because the Lord God not only
preached in promise, in prophecy, the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ, but He showed how He would make this reconciliation.
How He would obtain redemption. It would be by the death of the
Lamb of God who would lay down His life and give Himself. The
Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's the gospel,
isn't it? Our Lord Jesus Christ, we have
sinned. All have sinned, all have fallen
short. All the misery of this world
is due to our own, it's our own fault, isn't it? Who can say
among us that sin is not their fault? That's the myth of this
world. You were born good, it's your
environment that affected you. You started with a clean slate
and then bad influence made it dirty, soiled it. It's really
not your fault. Your degrading habits are really
the fault of somebody else. Let's find out who it was so
we can blame somebody else. The gospel says, no, you own
it all. Confess your sins. Agree with
God. Look to Christ. He's faithful
and just to forgive us our sins. Let's pray. Our God and Father,
we come to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray,
Lord, that you would find us in him, and you would count his
obedience as ours, and his sufferings as the payment of all of our
sins, and you would clothe us with his own righteousness, so
that we might not be found naked in our shame and sin, but we
might be covered And we might be found as having perfect righteousness,
even His own. And in this we pray, Lord, that
You would give to us those things that You've promised. We could
never come to You and expect things, blessings from You, except
had You not spoken of them in Your Word as being in the Lord
Jesus. But we pray, Lord, that give to us according to the love
You've shown in Your Son, according to the blessings You've given
Him for His work, We pray with boldness, Lord, give to us the
reward of Christ's obedience. Not because we deserve it, but
because he earned it. And that was his, it was his
reward to give. Lord, we pray for this grace.
Have mercy upon us. Show us Christ. Don't leave us
in our sins, but make us to see your glorious perfections in
your redeeming work. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.