Goodbye to Paradise

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the first religious act of history to somehow cover over sin, to somehow make myself better than I know I am. My friend, let me suggest to you that if you do not know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you can come to church, but that's a fig leaf. You can give money away. You can attend a Bible study.

You may even teach one fig leaves. Human self effort to save your conscience when you've never dealt with sin. The moment that Adam and Eve fell into sin, everything changed, and they knew it.

This is why the Bible describes their efforts at trying to cover up and even trying to hide from God as he came to meet with them. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. We're continuing through our vintage wisdom series entitled Origins. It's a series through Genesis 1 through 11. Today we come to chapter 3, looking at humanity's fall into sin.

Stephen's calling this lesson, Goodbye to Paradise. If you're able, grab your Bible and a cup of coffee, open to Genesis 3. We discovered in Genesis chapter 2 last session, God created a beautiful relationship that is between husband and wife, and yet no sooner had God created that relationship that Satan set about the wheels of motion to destroy that relationship, and you'll find in chapter 3 the tragic fall of man.

I think chapter 3 of Genesis is the saddest, most tragic chapter in all the Bible, and yet you will find as we study this chapter that interwoven into the tragic tapestry of chapter 3, you will discover the threads of hope and salvation. It says in verse 1 of chapter 3 that the serpent was crafty, and oh, how Satan is indeed crafty. In fact, two times we are warned of Satan in Scripture by the apostles. In 2 Corinthians chapter 2, 11, Paul exhorts the church in Corinth not to be ignorant of Satan's schemes. The word scheme is the original word agnumen, which means mindset or mentality, because Satan has a mentality, he has a mindset, he has a way of thinking, and I think you would discover that type of thinking in the humanistic philosophy of today's society. Paul will also warn the church in Galatians chapter 6 verse 11 to put on the entire armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The word wiles there could be translated schemes, but it comes from a different original word, the word methodias, which we get our word method from. So we discover from the writings of Scripture that Satan has a mindset, a mentality, and he also has a method. You're going to discover along with me in chapter 3 of Genesis the methodology of Satan and its five faceted deception. Would you look at me please in Genesis chapter 3 and we're going to look at the fivefold scheme of Satan in tempting Eve.

The first of this fivefold scheme in tempting Eve is that he appeared in the form to deceive. The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Evidently Satan took the form of the serpent. This was one of the creations of God.

It was beautiful. Perhaps the beautiful colors were attractive to the woman and so Satan chose to inhabit the serpent. So he inhabited a serpent because he wanted to take a form that would deceive and you need to understand that Satan isn't running around town wearing a bright red suit with a long tail, with a pitchfork, fangs, shoveling coal. He's an angel of light and he will take whatever appearance necessary to deceive and with Eve it was the form of a serpent. Now I want to show you Satan's cunning in two ways and this is because I asked myself the question when I looked here at verse 1, why did Satan come to Eve alone?

Why pick on her? Why did he come to Eve? And I think this reveals his cunning in two ways. First of all, because Satan knew the pattern of God's creation and so he was cunning in coming to her. Secondly, he understood the principle of divide and conquer. So he came to Eve when she was all alone.

Satan understood the principle of dividing and conquering. I think what we find here is an emphasis on the necessity of mutual accountability in marriage. The importance for mutual accountability and unity in marriage is discovered right here in the temptation of Eve. And I think that you will find a person who is unwilling to live in unity with her spouse, unwilling to follow the guidelines of the word of God in relation to her or him, I think you will discover in a person that individual who is in rebellion to the institution of the local New Testament church, one who is ostracizing himself from that fellowship, those institutions that God has ordained, the one who is living apart from a unity in that relationship, you will find in that person a susceptible person.

I think you'll find a sitting duck. There's an interesting verse that the apostle gives us when he talks about husbands and wives living in unity together. So that your prayers be not hindered. And that's a fascinating implication. What he is implying there is that if you as a husband and wife are not in a harmonious relationship, your prayers are being hindered.

Let me suggest something startling. If you are at odds with your husband or wife, you might as well not pray. It doesn't matter if you get up at four o'clock in the morning. If you are at odds with your husband or wife, God is interested in the prayer of confession. He is interested in the harmonious relationship between husband and wife. So forget the religious facade. Get it right with them and then pray. Because then your prayers will not be hindered. God can answer. I think secondly, Satan not only appeared in a form to deceive, but he cast doubt on the word of God. Look at the last part of verse one. And he said to the woman, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden or every tree of the garden? He casually suggests to Eve, has God said this? And if a serpent can smile, he smiled.

Do you really think that God meant you couldn't eat from every tree? You see, you need to understand that Satan is not coming across as some brash, rude character. Shakespeare said it well when he wrote that the prince of darkness is a gentleman. The serpent came in to beguile her and asked a simple, polite question. Say, did God say this?

But he is sowing by that in her mind a seed of doubt. And I want you to notice the response of woman in verses two and three. And the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it.

That's not in there. God didn't say that. He only said you couldn't eat it.

But you shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die. Now I want you to notice the third thing in Satan's temptation. And that is he denies the truth of God's word. Look at verse four. And the serpent said to the woman, now he's a little brash, you surely shall not die.

Mark it down, ladies and gentlemen. Every temptation is an opportunity to either believe the words of Satan or the words of God. God said eat it and die.

Satan says eat it and you won't die. You understand, men and women, that when you sin you are either believing the words of God or the lies of Satan. God always tells the truth and John 8 44 declares that Satan is the father of lies. And one of the things that Satan will do as he did with Eve is pull you from the words of God. Sow seeds of doubt in your mind about the words of God so that you will one day deny the words of God and follow the words of Satan.

Fourthly, he attributed to God evil motives. Verse five, the first part. This is the amazing thing about this entire temptation to me. He dares to imply, verse five, for God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be open. Now it's God who's jealous. It's God who is the one that cowardly protects his throne.

Satan would suggest to a woman, look, if you eat, God's afraid. He knows that you will be like him. And he trembles at the thought. He is an envious God. He is jealous of his character. And Satan attributes to God the evil motives when God holds our best interest at heart. He is doubting the goodness of God.

Do you know something, men and women? When you and I face temptation, we come to that same conclusion. Is God really good in withholding this from me?

Could he be better to me if he allowed this for me? Satan says, oh, God isn't as good to you as he could be because he'd give you this. So he doubts the goodness of God and he attributes to God evil motives.

And then the last thing, number five, is he promises blessing through disobedience, the last part of verse five. And you will be like God knowing good and evil. Listen, he says sin will pay off.

It'll bring dividends and it will for a season. But make no mistake, obedience to the words of Satan do offer benefit, but it's only temporary. Where obedience to the words of God offer benefits, but they are eternal. And that's the difference that we find in Genesis chapter three. Eat it, Satan says, and you will be like your creator. Eat it and you will be like God. You say that isn't happening today, is it?

Yes, it is. In fact, the truth is that Satan is offering to mankind this very same thing. He is saying you are divine. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that's the physical lure, and that it was a delight to the eyes, that's the emotional lure, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, that's the intellectual lure.

She took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. And do you notice the three things, the emotional, the physical, the intellectual lure? There are times when it will make perfect sense to disobey God. There will be times in your life when it will just make common sense to do something other than what God declares. Talk to someone who does not follow God, and they have their logic. And God says, though it may make sense to you now, there is coming judgment.

Ultimately, it brings death. Now, I want to give you a threefold discovery of sin. Number one, they discovered their nakedness because of this sin. Verse 7, the first part, and the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. The word new here is the Hebrew word that could be translated. They had intellectual insight.

All of a sudden, they knew something was wrong. The second thing that they discovered was self effort. Look at the next part of verse 7.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the first religious act of history. This is the first act of self effort to somehow cover over sin, to somehow make myself better than I know I am. I think what we see here is the first religious act of human history.

When Adam and Eve, knowing that there is something wrong, something amiss, they take it into their own hands to remedy the situation. My friend, let me suggest to you that if you do not know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you can come to church, but that's a fig leaf. You can pray prayers.

Those are fig leaves. You can give money to church. You can give money away. You can attend a Bible study.

You may even teach one fig leaves. Human self effort to pull yourself up, to salve your conscience when you've never dealt with sin. And that's what they did here. They also discovered, thirdly, fear, verse 8. And they heard the sound of the Lord God. That's not the sound of his voice, by the way. That's the literal sound of the Lord God walking. Evidently, he had taken some kind of human form or some kind of form that could make himself known to the senses of man. We don't know what kind of form that was.

It may not have been a human form. But they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and the wife, look what they did, hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

They discovered fear. Imagine, Adam, I hear God. He's coming.

Eve, look, I hear him too. Let's run. Run. And they hide behind some tree. And the tragedy of this whole situation is that Adam and Eve hiding over here behind this tree thought that they could get away from God. Thought that somehow God didn't know. They're about to learn a lesson that you and I often forget, and that's that God knows everything. They haven't been clued in on that yet.

They thought they could hide behind the bark of this tree and get away from it. And you and I often forget that God knows our sin as well. And you start at such a young age revealing the lack of understanding that God knows all. And you try it out on your parents first. That's where it first starts.

And you didn't have to have anyone teach you how to do that either. Hebrews chapter 4 reads that before him all things are naked and open. I want to give you something else, however, and that is a fourfold disintegration. The first is the disintegration of fellowship with God in verses 9 and 10. And the Lord God called the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked.

That's a lie. So I hid myself. He said, I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I sinned, he should have said.

But he said, I was naked. So I hid myself before openness and communication, now hiding in guilt. Secondly, the disintegration of marital unity.

The disintegration of marital unity. Verse 11 and 12. I want you to note this carefully. And he said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat? Boy, God is just like a parent, didn't he? Did you do what I told you not to do? And here's Adam. I mean, he's called in on the carpet.

There is no way out. Uh, Lord, she, uh, the one you gave me, she did it. And then she probably looks at the Lord and says, Lord, I can't believe this man blames me. And God says in the next verse, well, what's this you have done?

And now he's on the carpet. And so she says, uh, the serpent, he made me do it. And now Adam's hot. Oh boy. What do you mean the serpent? You got onto me because I blamed you and now you're blaming the serpent. And here they go. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Boy, it's a good one.

How did they learn these techniques? Why, before this, they had never argued perfect harmony. And now the drop of a hat bang at each other's throats.

I'll tell you why. Because sin brought about a loss in marital harmony. Three things drastically changed. First is that marriage lost its harmony. They blamed each other. I don't know where they learned the techniques of arguing, but boy, they were masters at it. All of a sudden I read where one newlywed couple told some friends, we decided we wouldn't go to sleep at night, mad at one another.

We haven't had any sleep for three weeks now. So true. Why?

Because it just comes naturally. Look at verse 16. We'll get back to verse 15 in a moment. To the woman he said, this is because of the sin or the fall, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children. Yet your desire shall be for your husband. Now the word desire could be translated crave.

It is a pursuit. You could translate this phrase, your craving will be over your husband. Her desire, that means her emotional being, is now exaggerated. Where once her husband was his, now she would seek to possess him. She now seeks to manipulate, to fashion, to form him after her own will. But I want you to notice what makes it even worse, and that is that man has lost his naturally loving headship. Would you notice the last part of verse 16?

And he shall rule over you. The implication here of course is the exaggerated sense where now man will not lovingly lead. Man will tyrannically rule, and he will subjugate woman.

He will press her down. And where you find countries without the word that gives us the solution, you will find women who are nothing more than beast objects. And even in America where the word is not learned and loved, you will find women as objects, toys, beasts of burden.

Why? Why does man find it so easy to subjugate? Why does man find it so easy to tyrannically rule? It is because of sin. It comes naturally now to mankind to rule, to dominate without love.

The third disintegration is the disintegration of man's paradise. Verses 17 and 19 read, Then to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. All the days of your life you shall eat, from the toil of it, both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you. Verse 18.

And the Hebrew in fact could read, It shall grow for you by itself, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. And I always used to think that that meant that man would have to sweat to get bread until I had the privilege of studying the original. What this literally means is that man toils and he sweats. And interspersed between the effort of man and toiling, he sits down to eat. In other words, his work is broken up by his meals. And yet even when he sits down to eat, he is still sweating. Man is cursed now by being forced to plow an unyielding soil to work.

And even in his eating he does not rest. You'll notice also the disintegration of physical immortality. The last part of verse 19. Till you return to the ground because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Let me give you quickly a fourfold deliverance.

First of all, victory is promised. Look at verse 13. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate. And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and dust. You shall eat all the days of your life. But notice the promise.

This is called the protoevangelium. This is the first promise of the gospel. Verse 15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. Now we have two ways to interpret and I think both are correct. One is immediate and the other one is prophetic. The first interpretation is that the seed of the woman will be at enmity. That is the woman following God at enmity with the seed of the serpent. There is a clash from then on until God reigns between those who believe God and those who do not believe God. They will be at war. But I want you to notice there's a prophetic utterance as well because they change from the plural to the singular. And he, not they, but he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.

Who is he? You know it. Jesus Christ. This is the promise of Jesus Christ. And where would this take place?

Where would the bruising of the heel take place? On the cross where the Savior's heel was pricked but of no effect because he gained the victory over the grave. But in that act he forever broke the power of sin that the serpent had over mankind. Promise is given. Secondly, marital unity can be experienced only if the power of Satan is quenched in the life of the believer in his practice by yielding to the Spirit of God. Thirdly, paradise will be re-established. This is a promise. Revelation 21 1a says, And I saw a new heaven, and guess what else? A new earth.

Fourthly, physical immortality will be assured forever. Genesis chapter 3, the curse, the fall, the expulsion. Goodbye to paradise. God closes the door on Eden. But Revelation chapter 22 promises once again the coming paradise, the coming kingdom, and those who believe in the land will be able to participate in the coming kingdom.

Let me give you three applications and we're finished. Number one, in the final analysis, sin never pays. It costs. Let me read you Genesis chapter 3 verses 23 and 24. Was it worth it for Adam and Eve to eat to believe the lie of Satan? Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So he drove the man out and at the east of the Garden of Eden he stationed the cherub and the flaming sword which turned in every direction. Literally it means that there wasn't a sword that was on fire, it was a flame that was shaped like a sword and it moved in every direction. That is as if it were lightning and it flashed all around that tree as quick as you could see. It was an awesome thing to think that there were cherubim, angels stationed around that tree and there was this flashing of light all about it to keep man from coming in.

It turned in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. Secondly, harmony in the home begins in the heart. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling within every believer but to be controlled is the key and it is in that control that brings that harmonious state back once again. Number three, paradise is designed for sinners, for sinners but those who have been forgiven. In a cemetery in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania is the tomb of a soldier that had died during the civil war. Among that tombstone of course were many others and Abraham Lincoln sought to honor a soldier in a particular way and so he chose one particular soldier's tombstone and underneath his name and date of life and birth and death he had written into the stone these words, Abraham Lincoln's substitute. That soldier symbolized the fact that those who died in battle died so that others could live. Men and women you are either living under the curse of Genesis chapter 3 or you have the promise of Revelation chapter 22. What makes the difference? That you can look at the cross of Christ, that you can think in your mind there Jesus Christ died one day for you and can you put your name on the cross?

Stephen Davies substitute. He died so that I can live. If you can't see your name, if you've never gone to the cross you're under the curse. If you've gone to the cross paradise, an abundant life now, marital harmony now, forgiveness for sin now will be once again experienced. We've covered an awful lot of scripture. We've looked at an awful lot of verses but yet I want the main theme to drive home that Jesus Christ has been promised that he died for you, for me. And if you've accepted him as your Savior then you have all of the promises of paradise given to you.

All that Adam experienced and Eve before the fall can be yours but more importantly than that future kingdom right here and now you can have the abundance of life that is promised. I wonder if I'm speaking to someone here that's never trusted Jesus Christ as personal Savior. Your name is not there on the tree.

You haven't given them the opportunity to be your substitute. Oh you're covered with fig leaves. You attend a church. You give a portion of your money to church or charity. You say your prayers.

You're polite. You're a good person, a good father or mother, a good provider and yet they are fig leaves. What is necessary is what God would do later as we'll study with Adam and Eve. He killed an animal. He shed the blood and he clothed them with the skin. It was a picture of atonement.

Without the shedding of blood there can be no remission for sin. Thanks for tuning in and joining us today here on Wisdom for the Heart. Your Bible teacher is Steven Davey. I realize that Steven sounded a little different than normal in this broadcast and that's because we've gone back to our vintage wisdom archives to a series of lessons that Steven taught over 30 years ago. We wanted to share them with you because this teaching through the early chapters of Genesis is just as relevant today as it was when Steven first taught them back in 1988. In addition to being your Bible teacher, Steven is also the president of Shepherd's Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina. If you know someone who's interested in theological training at the seminary level, encourage them to consider Shepherd's Seminary. Shepherd's Seminary was recently identified as one of the top five fastest growing evangelical seminaries in the United States. Graduates of the school are serving the Lord in countries all over the world. Learn more about the school and the opportunities it offers at wisdomonline.org forward slash s-t-s. We're so glad to have you with us today. Please join us next time as Steven brings you more wisdom for the heart. you