New Garments: Even in the terrible chapter of the Fall of humanity to sin, the grace and mercy of God are found in abundance. Ever since, sin has had a profound impact on our relationships, work, identity, and so much more. But even in a place of guilt and shame, God’s promises are full of hope. Recorded on Feb 20, 2022, on Genesis 3:14-24, by Pastor David Parks.
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This message is part of The Making of Heaven and Earth sermon series. There are few more important chapters ever written than the first three chapters of Genesis. These chapters dramatically shape our understanding of who we are, where we’ve come from, and the reason why things are the way they are today. More importantly, they introduce us to the God who created and sustains all things.
Sermon Transcript
All year, we’re talking about The Greatness of God. And today, we’re continuing a sermon series called The Making of Heaven and Earth from Genesis 1-3. As we’ve said, there are few more important chapters ever written than the first three chapters of Genesis. The creation narratives of the Bible shape our understanding of who we are, where we’ve come from, and the reason why things are the way they are today. But more importantly, they introduce us to the God who created and sustains all things. So far, we’ve considered the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation and vocation of human beings, and the creation of marriage before the fall to sin that we looked at last week. The fall of humanity marks one of the most significant turning points of history and is really what most of the rest of the Bible is all about. Well, today, we’ll consider some of the consequences of the fall. However, even (and perhaps only) in the disaster of the fall, do we see the depths of the grace/mercy of God. If you have a Bible/app, please open to Ge 3:14.
Genesis 3:14-24 (NIV), “14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
As we’ve said, the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah, were written by Moses, the famous prophet/leader of the people of ancient Israel during the time of the Exodus. Moses was writing during a time when it was critical for God’s people to learn/remember their story, including who God created people to be and what God created people to do. But without an understanding of the fall to sin, you really wouldn’t be able to understand why the world is how it is today. Of course, every generation needs to know these things. So let’s go back and work through this text together starting with v. 14.
Genesis 3:14-15 (NIV), “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. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” So if you weren’t with us last week, we had the man and woman in the unspoiled garden enjoying perfect openness, honesty, and trust. Able to walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day without fear, naked but without shame. But this mysterious and crafty serpent, later named our Adversary, came to question and distort the word of God. What was wrong was made to seem right and good and beautiful. The humans tried to define for themselves their own identity and morality. So they chose to disobey God. This sin brought immediate consequences. No longer were the husband and wife perfectly one. No longer did the human beings perfectly love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Instead, they were covering themselves in shame, hiding in fear from God’s judgment, and blaming everyone else instead of owning their sin in repentance. So here, we have God’s response to this disaster, this act of cosmic treason, as I said last week. First, God addresses the Adversary, the serpent. It will be cursed and disgraced. But, curiously, God says that the battle between humanity and the serpent will continue. “…I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [seed] and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Now, I’m going to come back to this, but God seems to suggest that humanity will eventually triumph over the Adversary (he will crush your head), but that the seed/offspring of the woman would be somehow wounded in the process (you will strike his heel). These are the consequences of the fall for the serpent. Next, the woman in v. 16.
Genesis 3:16 (NIV), “To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Even with the amazing advancements of modern medicine, for which I am very thankful, childbirth is still a severely painful process. This pain and difficulty in fulfilling the vocation of humanity — which, remember is to be fruitful, to fill the earth, and subdue it, to work it and take care of it — was not how our lives were meant to be. But rather, they are rooted in the fall to sin. We still get the blessing of children and grandchildren but through much hardship and pain. The second consequence of sin is a little more difficult to interpret. The NIV Bible translation has “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” The ESV Bible translation has “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband…” which sounds like the opposite of the NIV (not for but contrary to). Literally, it reads, “Your desire will be toward your husband, and he will rule over you.” I think this passage has two possible meanings. First, it could mean, as the ESV suggests, that in marriage, the gender-based roles of husband and wife will become a place of conflict when they were intended to be a place of whole-life oneness. So today, marriage is so often a picture, not of the relationship between Christ and the church, but rather of the brokenness of the world. This largely negative interpretation does seem to fit the context of understanding the consequences of sin on the world. Another interpretation, as I think the NIV suggests, is a little more positive. That the desire of the wife for her husband and the rule of the husband aren’t necessarily oppressive or wrong. That in the difficulty/chaos/pain of this fallen world, a marriage covenant does provide quite a bit of protection for a mother and children. Especially during the vulnerable and exhausting years when your kids are young. In the end, I’m not sure the text gives us a clear direction for which interpretation is intended. And maybe that’s because there’s wisdom in understanding this verse from both perspectives. In the fall to sin, marriage, having kids, parenting, and everything else that happens at home has been profoundly impacted by sin. Not everything is bad. In fact, there are many wonderful moments in marriage and in the family, but there is also great hardship, and in some tragic cases, great harm or abuse. So, we’ve seen the consequences of sin to our Adversary, to the woman, and now the man in v. 17.
Genesis 3:17-19 (NIV), “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Our work/vocation won’t just be hard at home (in marriage and raising kids), but also in the world. Since the fall to sin, sometimes our work is fruitful. Sometimes we’re able to get into a career that we care about and are able to do good work that brings glory to God and is good for all people. But sometimes we work and work and work, through painful toil, we work, but our work produces only thorns and thistles, no fruit. We were still created to do good work, but now our work is affected by the fall to sin. Sometimes we enjoy productive and life-giving relationships with our coworkers. Other times we just try to get through the day without killing anybody. I get it. But it’s not just our work, in or outside the home, it’s all of life. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Ultimately, the result of sin is death. How could it be any other way when creatures decide to abandon their creator? When people decide to walk away from the life and light and love of God? And so in some profound way, in a way that I’m not sure we can ever fully understand, when the creatures who were made in the image of God decided to reject God’s word, it wasn’t just morally wrong, it fundamentally shifted the whole cosmos from a kingdom of light to a kingdom of darkness. Now all of creation is subjected to frustration. Now things that were meant to last forever break down. Now things that were meant to be holy and perfect are corrupted. Now things that were meant to be easy and painful and difficult. Now there are things like rape and murder and child abuse, now there are things like birth defects and car accidents and cancer. If the Bible ended here, we would be crushed by hopelessness and despair. We would all become nihilists and believe that nothing really matters. But the story doesn’t end here, does it? There’s more to the story. What happened next? How would God treat these wayward creatures of his? Look back at v. 20.
Genesis 3:20-21 (NIV), “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” This isn’t the first glimmer of hope for humanity. The fact that God didn’t immediately kill these rebellious humans was a good sign. And the fact that God said the vocation of humanity would continue, even affected as it would be by the power of sin and death, was a good sign, too. But here we start to see the greatness of the grace and mercy of God. Now, grace is a gift you don’t deserve, while mercy is when you don’t get a consequence that you do deserve. Buying JD’s for my kids is grace. But paying their parking ticket is mercy. So despite their sin, despite even their lack of repentance, God mercifully allows Adam and Eve, whose names symbolically mean the earth and life, to continue. God didn’t have to do this, but he did. God is always patient with people, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2Pe 3:9b). But more than just mercy, God graciously makes garments of animal skin to cover the sin-exposed guilt and shame of Adam and Eve. God’s grace goes beyond his mercy to be a blessing to people who do not deserve it. And here, God’s grace is given through the making of clothing. Do you know what this means? Something had to die in order to cover their sin. From the beginning, a sacrifice was required to shield people from the consequences of sin. This outward, physical covering of clothing was a sign pointing to a deeper, spiritual need for covering and protection, the need for deliverance/salvation from sin and death and judgment. Let’s finish with v. 22.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV), “And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” So the human beings were sent out from the presence of a holy God and eternal life with him. But even here, we see the mercy of God at work. For Adam and Eve would not be able to stand the presence of God in the garden, but also, who would want to live forever in a world that is broken and marred by sin? Mercifully, God limits the amount of time people have to endure this kingdom of darkness. Now, if this was all of the Bible that had, we’d still have some measure of hope, seeing, as we did, the grace and mercy of God toward sinful people. But we wouldn’t have the full measure of hope that would come in the fullness of time. Now, there are clues even here, at the very beginning of the fall to sin, as to what God would do to finally deal with the problems of sin and death. I’ll close this morning by pointing to two different signs from this text which point us directly to the good news of the gospel.
First, was back in v. 15. Some call this the proto euangelion, or the first gospel proclamation. This is the promise of God that the seed (singular) of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. The real problem of everything had come through human beings. So would the solution come through a human being. Later in Scripture, it is Jesus who is called the seed. The NT authors are careful to show that Jesus was the seed of Adam and Eve, the seed of Abraham and Sarah, the seed of David, the one whom God had promised, one who would be wounded by the devil but would ultimately triumph over all the forces of spiritual darkness. Even here, in describing some of the consequences of the curse, God promises hope.
Second, and finally, in providing clothing for Adam and Eve, God required a sacrifice. This would’ve been important for ancient Israel to know, because, under Moses, God continued this practice with the system of animal sacrifice to atone/pay the price for the guilt and shame of the sin of the people. But from the beginning, this sacrifice that covered the sin of the people pointed to the greater sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. On the cross, Jesus died in our place, for our sins. So today, for those who believe in him, not only are your sins covered in forgiveness but you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ and are being re-made into his image day by day by the power of the Holy Spirit. The fall to sin had a profound impact on God’s good and perfect world. Now, our lives, relationships, marriage, family, home, and work are all affected and distorted in some ways, difficulties and pain abound. But God didn’t abandon us to the mess we had made. He demonstrated his abundant grace and mercy in ways we never would’ve seen if we had remained in perfection. Instead, God made promises that gave generations and generations of people hope, even in the darkness of this broken world. And ultimately, he fulfilled these promises in the person and work of Jesus. Next week, in an epilogue to our series, we’ll go from the beginning to the end. From the creation and fall to the new creation of what God will do one day, to re-create all things in Christ. But one thing we learn from this dramatic sweep of history is that our God is great, but our God is so very, very good.