Many of you ladies are wearing a diamond ring. My wife has told me many times how much she loves the marquise diamond I gave her fifty-five years ago. To me, a diamond is a diamond, but to many women, diamonds are important – and so are their various shapes and colors. I have read that there are ten basic diamond shapes and there are varieties in colors and clarity. Then, of course, there is the question of size. But to me – and to many men – a diamond is pretty rock that our wives wear with pride.
The Word of God can be compared to a large collection of diamonds. Not every chapter – not every diamond – is of the same comparative value or color. And certainly there is a variety in clarity. But not one chapter should be removed from God’s collection, because, after all, a diamond is a diamond.
Genesis 3 is one of the most important and valuable diamonds in God’s vast treasury. I would like to share it with you this morning as the basic reason why we need a Saviour. Certainly we need to hear the gospel and each of us need the Lord Jesus Christ. But why? Yes, you need a Saviour because of your history of lying and there was that shop-lifting episode in your life. But these things are only two symptoms of the disease which brought about the death of your eternal spirit.
We read a few minutes ago from Romans 5 – another extremely important passage of scripture. But some of you might have thought: “This diamond doesn’t have much clarity.” For that reason, I’d like to take you to the foundation of Paul’s Romans 5 statement. I’d like to take you to the reason for it all – the reason for Jesus’ coming to earth; the reason for His death; the reason for the preaching of the gospel. And it may also be the reason you will be cast into Hell and the Lake of Fire.
For this lesson this morning, I’ve modified an outline I heard or read somewhere. Despite my modifications, the basic eight point outline is not original with me. It is been in one of my little notebooks for years.
And those notes first pointed to … SATANIC TEACHING.
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” There are a lot of religious liberals who try to tell us that this is nothing more than a Hebrew fable. But as a religious fundamentalist, I am here to tell you that every word of this verse and chapter are true. And if it isn’t true, then the whole fabric of the Bible falls apart like a two hundred-year-old funeral shroud. For example, if this isn’t the truth then we can’t believe a word the Apostle Paul ever taught us. Because he wrote to the Corinthians: “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy… I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Is it simplistic to believe that a serpent spoke to Eve? Is it childish? In some ways I suppose it is. But remember the words of the Lord Jesus, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” Like little children, if we don’t understand something God has said, we need to trust Him and cling to it until we are able to understand it.
Verse 14 hints that perhaps this serpent was not like the serpents we have in our world today. This serpent may have had legs, looking more like a lizard or a dragon than like a rattlesnake. That’s okay. How many varieties of animals are we discovering today which were wiped out during the Noaic flood? This one animal was altered by God. It was changed and then essentially eliminated before the flood. It is quite logical that there isn’t even the opportunity to find fossils of this creature. And have animals ever been given the miraculous ability to speak? Yes, they have. Numbers 22. I have no trouble believing every word of this verse, and my faith is a part of my trusting Christ for salvation.
Why didn’t Eve show any fear while listening to this creature? To that question I’ll ask another: Why did Adam and Eve later fear the voice of the Lord in the Garden? What took place between the first part of this chapter and the last part? Sin entered the picture. Did the innocence of Eve keep her from fear, but when sin poisoned and killed her spirit, fear came as well?
I believe that Satan infilled this creature, making it more subtle than any other physical, living creature. The serpent asked a Satanic question: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Eve didn’t initiate the conversation. The serpent did, and it knew of God’s one prohibition. At this point, it didn’t overtly state: “God never said that.” Initially it was only the casting of doubt. It is just like the doubt which the devil might have given you in regard to believing this verse. “Yea, hath God said, the subtil serpent actually spoke to the woman?” Yes, He did.
After planting the doubt, the evil creature took his logic to the next step: “Ye shall not surely die.” I wonder what words were emphasized in that statement? “YE shall not surely die.” “Ye shall NOT surely die.” “Ye shall not surely DIE.” Or did it emphasize the word “surely?” Eventually the serpent said, “God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Here is the Satanic logic and teaching – something which crept into our human psyche, residing there ever since. The greatest knowledge that any human might possess is to know the Lord well enough to enjoy Him. The highest of all knowledge is not to know the difference between good and evil. Yes, it is helpful to know that lust is sin, and abstinence from sin is good. It is good to know that praise is comely, but blasphemy is evil. But here comes the Satanic instruction and evil idolatry. To really learn of goodness and evil, we must set our eyes upon the Lord, not on the tree of knowledge. The highest of all knowledge is to know Jehovah, who is the perfect standard of goodness. The devil’s educational emphasis is upon anything that is less than Jehovah God. And in respect to Satan, Paul says in Romans 1 – “Professing themselves to be wise, (human beings) became fools. And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things” – to the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Satan wants us to look anywhere but to the Lord God – Jehovah Elohim. And when he says, “God doeth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” among other things, he sparked the modern prosperity gospel. “Elohim doeth know that in the day ye eat thereof… ye shall be as Elohim yourselves.” There is the very height of blasphemy and idolatry. And Eve took the bait – hook, line and sinker. She wanted to be her own god. In her mind and heart she disliked God’s sovereignty. Sin sinned, not only against the rule of not eating that fruit, but against God as God.
Listen to her CARNAL REASONING.
“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, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 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, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
Today we know that demons can channel themselves through people – such as popular preachers, and through animals, and even through physical objects, but we can’t fault Eve for not seeing this coming. She shouldn’t have been talking to this speaking serpent, but she didn’t know that. This was all new temptation territory for her, but still, she had enough to protect herself, if she wanted it.
“Neither shall ye touch it.” And I don’t know if she was entirely to blame in what she said, or if Adam mislead her – “for her own good.” God didn’t speak to Eve. She hadn’t yet been formed when He forbade eating this fruit. God didn’t say, “Neither shall ye touch it,” but for some reason Eve said that He had. And this was a part of her downward trajectory. She added to the Word of God. When she did touch it, she didn’t die, just as the serpent said, so maybe the rest of his words were true. And then the fruit, whatever it was, looked ripe; it felt good in her hand, and it smelled delightful.
But recognize with what tools she was making her judgment. The Word of the Lord said one thing, but her fingers, eyes and even her nose told her something else. That tree was planted in the garden by the will of Jehovah. There was nothing sinful in the tree or its fruit. The sin was in what Adam and Eve did with the fruit of the tree. It reminds me of the apostle’s words in I John 2:16 – “For all that is in the world” – now corrupted by Adam’s sin. “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lusts thereof.” Eve was now reacting to the temptation of the serpent entirely in the flesh with the lust of the eyes and pride. “And the world passeth away and the lusts thereof.” But it is not just the world which passes away, so will Eve and her husband.
Watch Adam and Eve SPIRITUALLY DYING.
God had said in Genesis 2:18 – “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” And they did. But it is important to see that the Lord didn’t send His angels to bury or cremate their lifeless remains. Physically their lives began to deteriorate until many years later their hearts, lungs and kidneys stopped, and they showed no more brain activity. But God had said, “in the DAY that thou eatest thereof thou shalt SURELY die.” In this we are reminded that there is a difference between physical life and spiritual life. There is more than one kind of death – there is physical death and there is spiritual death.
Adam and Eve instantly – and spiritually – died before the Lord as soon as they committed their act of rebellion. And other things changed as well. “The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Yes, they came to realize that their bodies were uncovered and exposed to the eyes of each other and to the animals that inhabited the garden. That was understandable under those circumstances. More important than their physical nakedness, they realized they were naked before the eyes of Jehovah.
So they took steps toward PRESUMPTUOUS PROBLEM SOLVING.
“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.”
Look at the parents of humanity trying their best to hide their sinfulness from the omniscient God. How big was that garden? It was probably huge to Adam and Eve, but it was still tiny to the Creator. In fact the Lord filled every nook and cranny of Eden. There was no place for them to hide, and there was no way for them to hide their sin.
I don’t remember how old I was at the time, I must have been very young – six, seven, eight. Kids, back in those days of cowboys and Indians, played with toy guns, into which they could insert a roll of percussion caps. Cock the hammer and pull the trigger, and the toy would sound like it was firing a real bullet. Bang! Bang! How many of you “old” people remember cap guns? I may not have had one of those cap guns, nevertheless, one day at the corner store, I stole a roll of caps. Later in the day, at the side of the house, where my mother couldn’t “see” me, I laid out a few of those caps on a stone and taking a rock I pounded on one then another until they popped. You know what? Somehow my mother knew what I was doing. And she knew that I had stolen those caps. I tried to hide my theft, but she heard it. I tried to lie, saying someone gave me the caps, but she could see right through my lies. I was in big trouble, and had to confess my sin to the store-keeper.
I guarantee that God knew what Adam and Eve had done more easily than my mother knew what I had done.
Nevertheless, we see GOD’S SEEKING and PROBING.
“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. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto 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 shouldest not eat?”
From the moment of their sin, Adam and Eve ceased to seek after God, and none of their children ever have. Earlier they looked forward to the cool of the evening when they could fellowship with the Lord. Not now. Romans 3 tells us, “There is none righteous, no, not one. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is one that doeth good, no , not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” What is it that none of us understand? Among other things, we don’t understand the depth of our sin or our desperate need of the Lord’s grace. Let that sink in… there is no sinner on earth who is seeking his Creator, Jehovah. Sin has so corrupted us, so enslaved us; it has created such thorough depravity, not one soul since Adam has gone out looking for God, until the Lord first planted that desire within him.
But here we see God – the offended God – the King against whom all of us live in rebellion, looking for Adam and Eve – looking for sinners to save. But of course, that is an anthropomorphic statement – a human way of describing the infinite God. The Lord knew exactly were Adam was, and He knows exactly where you and I are to be found. He doesn’t “seek” for lost sinners in the same way the widow who lost her coin, went looking for it under the table and amongst the dust bunnies. Luke 19:10 – “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” When the Lord goes a’seeking, He always comes a’finding, with the lost lamb draped over His shoulders. He has never not found the sinner He intended to save. As Christ Jesus said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” – John 6:37.
I believe that Adam and Eve were forgiven and born again, and today they are in glory awaiting the rest of us. I believe they were saved by the grace of God, just as any and all the others whom the Lord has saved. And, by the way, that is despite the horrible guilt they should have felt for spiritually killing their billions of descendants. If there has ever been a sinner who should have said, “I am not worthy of grace,” it should have been Adam. There has never been a more wretched and forward-reaching sin than Adam’s sin. But God’s grace is miraculous and as omnipotent as the sovereign God Himself.
For the sake of my primary point, I’m going to skim over GOD’S earthly RECKONING of these sinners.
“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 dust 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.” This is almost assuredly a prophecy about the battle between Christ and Satan. You can rest assured that Christ will be victorious over the Devil.
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, of 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. And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” To whom was Jehovah Elohim speaking? This was a conversation within the Godhead – the Trinity. There is a sense in which we know the difference between goodness and sinfulness. Why did I try to hide and then to lie about the caps I had stolen? Because even as a child I knew the difference between right and wrong. But we know evil in a different way than God does, because we are evil and do evil – things which are foreign to the righteous God. Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”
To His everlasting praise, the Lord provided a MERCIFUL COVERING for the couple’s wretched sin.
Verse 21 – “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” From where did the Lord get these skins? We are told that He made them. The word “made” is found more than 2,600 times in the Bible. It is never translated “to create,” and only once is creation even implied. It means to manufacture in some way. And the word “skins” is exactly what you’d think that it means. In fact the Hebrew root word refers to “nakedness.” Jehovah God prepared clothing for Adam and Eve from the hides of two dead animals. I am not going to tell you that these were the hides of dead sheep, just as I’m not going to tell you that Adam and Eve ate apples off the Tree of Knowledge. I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.
But I am going to tell you that God took the lives of a pair of innocent substitutes to cover the nakedness of this sinful couple. I’m going to tell you that blood was shed to cover the sins of our first parents. To man an atonement. Hebrews 9:22 says, “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” And Leviticus 17:11 adds, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” You may disagree with me, and that is fine, but I believe that Adam and his wife were redeemed – that blood was shed to redeem them, remitting their sins.
Conclusion
Again, why do I say that Genesis 3 is one of the rarest and most valuable of all the diamonds in God’s Word? It is because here we learn of the reason for our sinfulness and our separation from God. If feel spiritually remote and alien from the Lord, that is perfectly natural, because it is the case. When Adam sinned he spiritually died, and as he and his wife brought children into the world, they were spiritually still born. As Paul said in Romans 5 – “For… by one man’s offence death reigned by one.” “As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation…” “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” – referring to the sin of Adam.
However, there is still some good news. The Lord God went out seeking and to save those two rebellious sinners. Amen? And “unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.” And later Christ Jesus, the Son of God, “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity…” “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many…” “Who His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree (the cross), that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.”
Genesis 3 explains who you are spiritually, and why you are a sinner. But it also hints that there is redemption available, pointing us to the New Testament where we see the necessary and perfect sacrifice. And now I beseech you, imploring you to look unto Christ Jesus. Repent of your sin, acknowledging your sinfulness, and put your faith for salvation in the Saviour. Listen to the Holy Spirit as He speaks to your heart. Surrender and submit. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”