The Fall of Man: Where It All Began
Tom Shrader launches a new series on the doctrines of grace, grounding it in five pastoral goals: deeper worship, humility, comfort in trials, confidence in evangelism, and security in salvation. He walks through Genesis 3 to show how Satan tempted Eve, how Adam and Eve responded to sin with hiding and self-covering, and how God's response foreshadowed the atoning work of Christ. Drawing on Romans 5:12, Shrader argues that Adam's sin rendered all humanity spiritually dead—not merely sick—and that life can only be restored by God's sovereign, gracious intervention through Jesus Christ.
“God knows everything you've done, everything you will do, every thought you've had, everything you wanted to do but didn't do, and He accepts you anyway.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Grace for Life, Grace for Living
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 51 min
Themes: grace, sin, temptation, worship, humility, salvation, evangelism, security, new believer, struggling with doubt, questioning God's sovereignty, seeking assurance of salvation, feeling spiritually lost, young adult, searching for comfort in trials, skeptic exploring christianity
Scripture: Romans 3:23, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Romans 5:12, Romans 6:23, Romans 8, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 5, Galatians, Ephesians 2:8, Philippians 1:6, Genesis 1:1, Genesis 2:16, Genesis 2:18, Genesis 3:1-24, Genesis 4, John 8:44, 1 Peter 1:8, 1 John 2:16, Leviticus 11:17
Theological Themes: doctrines of grace, total depravity, spiritual death, original sin, federal headship, atonement, sovereignty of God, predestination
Full Transcript
Introduction: Grace for Life and Grace for Living
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to Romans chapter 3. We are going to begin today a series I have titled "Grace for Life and Grace for Living." It is the series formerly known as "God's Plan for Salvation." Several months ago, I started telling you that my plan was to rework this series. It is a series that has also been known as the Doctrines of Grace — a historic look at salvation covering the truths of predestination, election, choosing by God, and salvation by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When we talk about the DNA of East Valley Bible Church, as we just did for three weeks, this study and this belief — which we are going to show you flows right from Scripture — is central to who we are. If you talk to most people who understand East Valley Bible Church, or even some who have only a caricature of it, they would say, "Well, that's that Calvinistic, doctrines of election, predestination church." We do not shrink away from that at all, but we do try to put some definition around it, because it is usually said in a disparaging way.
What I want to do in this series is take a somewhat different approach and look at the same issue through the lens of grace. I teach this series on the even-numbered years in the fall. This time I want to address two dimensions: grace for life — being born again, coming to understand who God really is — and grace for living — working out my salvation in fear and trembling. I think we do a really good job on the first. I am not sure we do as adequate a job on what it means to live by grace, and so that is reflected in the new title.
If you are brand new to this material, it would be valuable for you to go back to the website and listen to the series as it was presented last time. You simply go to "Messages," click "Archive," then "Series," and find the one called "God's Plan for Salvation." The seven lessons are there, and they would be a helpful supplement to what we are doing now. We have also put together a fairly extensive reading list — eight or ten books — that includes not just the heavily doctrinal titles we tend to have on campus, but some that take this truth and give it a practical component. Beginning next week, I want to introduce some of those books to you.
The Sovereignty of God: The Foundation of It All
What we are essentially talking about, when we discuss salvation and God's plan for salvation, is the sovereignty of God. It really gets down to the fundamental issue of who God is — not just in salvation, but in all things. In his book *Foundations of the Christian Faith*, James Boyce writes this, speaking of the attributes of God and focusing on His sovereignty:
"God has absolute authority and rule over His creation. In order to be sovereign, God must also be all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free. If He were limited in any one of these areas, He would not be entirely sovereign. Yet the sovereignty of God is greater than any of these attributes which it contains. Others may seem more important to us — love, for instance. But a little thought will show that the exercise of any of these attributes is made possible only by the sovereignty of God. God might love, for example, but if He weren't sovereign, circumstances could thwart His love, making that love useless to us. It is the same with God's justice. He may desire to establish justice among human beings, but if He were not sovereign, His justice could be frustrated and injustice could prevail."
What we are talking about is God being God — God being sovereign. He created this world. He did not simply wind it up and walk away. His sovereign plan is being worked out among and in and through us. What we are looking at is the issue of our salvation in the context of what the Bible says about God. That is what we come back to again and again. If we are going to talk about anything — if we are going to talk about God Himself — what you think and what I feel are far less relevant than what God says about Himself. That is what you really want to understand.
A Listener's Testimony: Why This Teaching Matters
I received an email this week that is so encouraging, and I want to read it to you with some comments along the way.
"I just wanted to say how excited I am that you're going to be doing this series on God's Plan for Salvation again. This will be my fifth time hearing it. I never grow tired of this message and teaching. I've been a Christian since 1962."
Now, this may be your experience as well — someone who has been around church their entire life but had never really heard this material. The email continues:
"When I heard this teaching for the first time eight years ago, I walked into the parking lot after the service shaking my head, wondering why I'd never heard this before. I have to admit that at first I rejected this completely. But something made me want to hear more, so I came back in the weeks that followed. And the more I heard, the more I wanted to learn."
And then listen to this — I love this part: "I remember spending the next 18 months reading, studying, going to classes, spending many sleepless nights listening and re-listening to tapes and CDs about the doctrine. But in the end, I've embraced it as truth, and it's absolutely changed my life."
So I want to say a couple of things, especially if you have been around church for a while and you come to this with some existing church background —
Introduction: A Life-Changing Teaching
If these things are new to you, as my grandpa would say, it's going to jar your preserves. It's going to shake you up. You're going to have all these emotions. You're going to be angry — why didn't I hear this before? What kind of church is this?
What I want you to see is that what happened in this person's life is a testimony we hear all over the place at East Valley Bible Church. There was struggle and pain, and it didn't just pass through easily. It wasn't a pill you could take or a little magic dust we had. It took her 18 months, and at the end of it she says, "It's changed my life."
That's where I want to get. She wrote: "Thank you for taking extra time to teach the message again and again. It's not just doctrine linked to some guy named Calvin, but it's become a way of life for me. As I now recognize who God is, what He's done for me, and that I'm nothing, I'm so grateful for His grace and mercy. This is the most important and powerful teaching I've ever heard. I realize that it's truly all about Him and not about me, and I love Him more every day."
That is the whole objective here. The whole objective is not for us to take some teaching of a man and hold it up, but to look at Scripture and see what it says about who God is and who we are. Is there a problem in that relationship, and if so, what is the solution?
Five Questions This Study Must Answer
Based on the title of God's plan for salvation, five questions immediately come to mind. Who needs to be saved, if anybody? What do we need to be rescued or delivered from? Is there indeed a way of deliverance? If there is a way of deliverance, can I know it? And if I know what that way is, is it available to me? Those are the questions we want to address.
Five Concrete Goals for This Series
I want to give you five things right up front, because I don't want this to be an exercise in doctrine and knowledge that puffs you up. I have five concrete goals for you and me in this study.
**First, that our worship of God is deepened.** You sang songs today — whether you're here in the chapel or over in the conference center — about God and His grace and His mercy, how you can trust Him and never fear, how you exalt His name. When you understand the sovereignty of God and He gets bigger and bigger in your eyes, that worship becomes deeper and deeper, because your eyes and heart and mind are focused on a big God. It was A. W. Tozer who said our theology does not ascend high enough or descend low enough — it doesn't ascend high enough to let God be God, or descend low enough to see man, you and me, as we really are. So the first goal is that our worship would deepen.
**Second, that there would be in our hearts a spirit of humility.** One of the unintended consequences of teaching this series, in some people's lives here at the church, is that they become extraordinarily arrogant. All of a sudden they think they've got some truth that nobody else has, and everywhere they go — every home group, every time they get their hair cut, every time they go to Costco, every time they're with another Christian — this becomes some sort of measurement of spiritual maturity. Rather than having exactly the effect it should, which is to humble and break them, it somehow builds them up. We are stripping away in this series anything you might feel in any way, shape, or form that you bring to the idea of salvation. Salvation is utterly, entirely, completely, and wholly a work of God, based on His good pleasure and nothing in you. There was nothing in you that was intriguing or interesting to God, and in spite of you He saves you. That should not puff you up. If it puffs you up, you don't get it.
**Third, that there would be comfort in the midst of trials, difficulties, and sorrows.** When I begin to see the sovereignty of God, I know that nothing is outside the realm of His control and authority. God is not in heaven saying, "Oh my word, I never saw this outcome coming. What a mess — who would have dreamt?" He is not in heaven unaware of your physical hurt or relational pain or any of the things in your life. In fact, here is the very DNA of East Valley Bible Church: everything in your life is either caused by or allowed by God. And if that is not true, then He is not God. Some of us are so familiar with that phrase that we lose the power of it, but for some people in this room — here in the chapel and in the conference center — it rocks their world. And yet that is what the Bible teaches. So in the midst of this comes great comfort. Whatever comes at me, God uses it for His good. Endure it with all joy, because all of this strengthens endurance.
**Fourth, that we would have great comfort and joy in evangelism.** When we talk about the sovereignty of God, we sometimes hear this objection: if God has decided who He is going to save, then why should I even evangelize? One of the wonderful practical benefits of understanding God's sovereignty in all things, including salvation, is the answer to that question. As God has ordained who He will save, He has also ordained the means by which He will save them — and that means is our proclamation of the truth. So do we evangelize? Absolutely. When you look at William Carey, the father of modern missions, you find a man who embraced these doctrines.
The Security of God's Grace
The reality of God's sovereignty did not impede William Carey's passion to take the gospel message to India in any way. It only intensified it and provided him encouragement and joy in the midst of his work. The reason is that the result — whether a person responds or not — is not our job. That is God's job.
God wants from you and me one thing as it relates to the gospel, outside of obedience to it, and that is the proclamation of it. As we proclaim that gospel, God is going to change hearts in some places and not in others. Sometimes you will share that gospel and people will respond and say this is the sweetest thing they have ever heard, and other times they will not. It is not you — it is God who opens eyes to respond.
Here is the fifth thing, and there may be others, but for now it is the fifth: we find great security in the midst of this. We will, in a few weeks, camp in Romans 8. If God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the love of Christ? Philippians 1:6 says, "He who began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus."
My relationship with God is absolutely secure. Here is the way we love to say it: you and I who are truly saved, truly rescued and delivered, are as certain of heaven as the saints who are already there. There is nothing I can do to break that relationship. Even in the midst of my sin, though the intensity and vitality of my communion with God can be affected by my sin, the union itself cannot be broken. God has accepted me.
Picking up on the idea of God's all-knowing nature — it is not as though you enter into this relationship for a while, begin to struggle with sin, and God says, "If I had known that about you, I would have never chosen you." He knows everything. He knows everything you have done, everything you will do, every thought you have had, everything you wanted to do but did not do — and He accepts you anyway. Those are wonderful truths, and they are part of what I hope to tackle as we embark on this study of grace for life and grace for living.
Who Needs to Be Saved?
I want to look at three passages that are very familiar to many of you — and if they are not, they need to become familiar to you. When we talk about who needs to be saved, the answer is all of us. Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All of us have sinned. As we unpack this, we will discover that we come into this world as sinners, separated from God — that is our nature — and then our nature manifests itself in our behavior.
Do we need to be rescued? Look at Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is death." When we sin, what we earn is death, and death here means literally separation. I need to be rescued and delivered from death. Peter delivers a wonderful sermon recorded by Luke in Acts chapter 2, saying that Jesus put an end to the agony of death. That is the way of deliverance.
The wage of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. The antidote to death is life — life that we find in Christ. That is what Jesus says: "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me." And can we know it? Yes. He makes it known to us. Whoever believes will be saved. All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
Is there hope for you? We will sit here and talk to you about sin, and if you understand and see that sin in your life and you confess it, God promises that He will save you. Now look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8, because here is the way of salvation: "By grace you have been saved through faith. It is not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not as a result of works." By definition, this explicitly states that salvation is unearned and undeserved. This way of salvation has nothing to do with us — nothing we have done, are doing, or will be doing. It is completely a work of God.
The Heart of the Gospel in Romans 5
With all of that in mind, let us look at Romans chapter 5 as a flyover overview of what we are going to be studying. Beginning at verse 1: we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 6: "While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "God demonstrated His own love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Verse 10 continues: "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." And not only this — we also exalt in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
Paul speaks to this same truth in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, at the end of that chapter, when he says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." Now all these things are from God, who has reconciled us to Himself.
Introduction: Why Genesis 3 Matters
God has called us to Himself through Christ and given us a ministry of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, calling people to be reconciled to God through Christ. That is the heart of this whole thing.
I want to invite you to turn to the front of your Bibles, to the book of Genesis, chapter 3. One time I was invited to speak at a church and I said, "Is there any topic?" They said, "No, you talk about whatever God lays in your heart." I said, "Well, that's sin and deception." They said, "Do whatever you want." So here is what I did: I called it the greatest chapter in the Bible and taught Genesis 3.
Part of that flows from my own personal experience. God saved me in 1980. The man He used in my life in the most significant way — and I always exclude my family from this — but any person other than my family, the person who had the greatest effect on me in my entire life is Larry Wright. When God first saved me, I was so devoted to Larry's teaching that people would say, everywhere that Larry went, Tom was sure to go.
I followed him around — not figuratively, but literally. I carried his briefcase and a tape recorder everywhere he went. I took his briefcase in, set the podium up, got the chair out, set up the tape recorder, wired him for sound, and got him prepared so we could capture his teaching and share it. To this day, by the way, you can access all of that information free online at discover-life.org. That is all of Larry's teaching.
When Larry taught Genesis 3, it was huge for me. It was one of those gigantic moments where, as a follower of Christ who was growing, all of a sudden I began to really understand why Jesus died. I began to understand my spiritual condition, what it means to be a natural man and the consequences of that. I began to find answers to those great questions in life: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?
I wrote some of those things down as they were going through my mind twenty years ago. What I wrote was this: it is hard to read Genesis 3 without saying to yourself, "Been there, done that." I am daily tempted, and the fall reoccurs daily in my life. Genesis 3 just tied it all together for me.
The Doctrinal Importance of Genesis 3
For us, in our examination of salvation, you will see very quickly why Genesis 3 is so important. Paul, whom we spent a great deal of time with in our introduction through the book of Romans, writes in Romans chapter 5, verse 12: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned." Genesis 3 is that pivotal doctrinal and practical chapter.
Ray Stedman, in his introduction to Genesis 3, writes this: "We come to chapter 3 of Genesis with a heightened sense of anticipation. In many ways this is the most important piece of information ever conveyed to man." Let me read that sentence again — that is a huge statement: "In many ways this is the most important piece of information ever conveyed to man." Even if you want to call that hyperbole, even if there is some exaggeration in it, at least let it grab your attention. This is important.
Stedman continues: "Here is the ultimate explanation for the tensions among nations. Here we find the answer to the eternal why that arises in our hearts in the midst of times of sorrow and tragedy. Here is the explanation for over a hundred centuries of human heartache, misery, torture, blood, sweat, and tears. Here is the reason for the powerful fascination with drugs, for the passion we have for power, the lure of wealth, the enticement of forbidden sex, both to young and old alike. Here is the only reasonable answer for the existence of these things in the world."
Moeller has a new book out on preaching, and in the midst of it he challenges those of us who teach to cling to the Word. It is not surprising that in doing so he also ends up going back to Genesis 3. He lists all the questions we would ask and speaks of its importance, saying this: "How you answer the questions will affect everything you do in life, from sexuality to the sanctity of life, the purposefulness of our labor to the meaning of life. This quite literally is the most basic and fundamental of questions. Are we made for a purpose, or are we an accidental product of a chaotic universe?"
Moeller goes on: "Of course, the fact that God created the world does not explain everything we experience. So soon after creation in Genesis 1 comes the story of the fall in Genesis 3. We cannot understand anything about ourselves in this present condition without immediate reference to this. Indeed, it is the fall into sin that explains all the suffering, all the strife, all the pain and the conflict in our life."
The Gap Between Genesis 2 and Genesis 4
If you are reading along, Genesis 2 ends with peace, harmony, innocence, unity, and fellowship. Genesis 4 has murder, strife, anger, hurt, pain, and guilt. If you did not have Genesis 3, you would read from one chapter to the other and ask, "What happened?" And the answer to all of it is Genesis chapter 3.
Entertainment, Agenda, and the Fall
When I was a young man, on Saturday nights we would sit down to what I would call great television. It would go like this: Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and All in the Family. That was a Saturday night. All in the Family was pretty cutting edge for its time. There were always comments, there was an agenda — just as there is with any show you see on television today. When people say it is just entertainment, it is not just entertainment. There may be an element of entertainment in it, but there is always something more being communicated.
The Question Behind the Chaos
People are always asking a legitimate question: if God created the world, why is it in such a mess? That question came up famously in an episode of *All in the Family*. Michael finally says to Archie, "Tell me this, Archie, if there's a God, why is the world in such a mess?" Archie, heading to the wisdom bank a little overdrawn, finally says in frustration, "Why do I always have to give these answers, Edith? Tell this dumb Polack why if God created the world, why the world's in such a mess." That is a great question, and it is a legitimate one. The people around you are asking legitimate questions, and we are not afraid of those because we have legitimate answers.
The answer begins in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heaven and earth." God spoke this thing into existence. Somehow there was this unmoved mover, this original eternal self-existing power — being God — who created it all. As He creates and unfolds this universe, He drops into it His creation, in many ways His crowning glory: the only thing created and made in His image and likeness, possessing eternality, understanding, and wisdom — man, you and me.
He gave man a command, found in chapter 2, verse 16: "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, for the day you eat from it you will die." Up to this point God has created and said it is good, it is good, it is very good. Verse 18 has the first malediction — not benediction — "it is not good for man to be alone," and God creates woman.
Three Movements in Genesis 3
When we get to Genesis 3, what we see is temptation, sin, and the response to it. If we were to divide this chapter into three sections, here they are: verses 1 through 5 is how Satan works, verses 6 through 13 is man's reaction to temptation and sin, and verses 13 through 24 is God's reaction to man's sin.
I will tell you, if we were really going to unpack Genesis 3, we would take weeks to do it. Susan and I were driving down to the kids' house to watch the Iowa game yesterday, and I said I've got a real dilemma tomorrow. I said to really unpack Genesis 3, really take it apart, is going to take two, three, four, five, six, seven weeks. My instinct is to do a quick flyover and pull out the key things, though it will raise questions that won't get answered. I asked for her advice, and she wouldn't spend six weeks on it either — so that was my answer.
I want to fly over this chapter, but I didn't get out the door before people were asking me a whole bunch of questions about it. This raises a whole bunch of questions, and we are not going in depth because I want to bring alive what Paul is talking about in Romans 5:12, which is that sin entered the world through one man.
How Satan Works
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made. And he said to the woman..." We could spend a great deal of time right here, because we have a talking serpent. Scripture tells us that he was shining, brilliant, beautiful. I presume — and I don't know for certain — but I presume if you went to the zoo today and a snake started talking to you, it would be a cause of concern. But for Eve, just the opposite was true. There is nothing pushing her away and in fact there is something alluring about him.
From the balance of Scripture we know that this serpent is Satan. Satan appears almost always in one of three forms: either a subtle serpent, an angel of light, or a roaring lion. Though he may appear in one of these three forms, he always has the same intention. Jesus says in John 8:44, "You have your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks, he speaks a lie from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of all lies."
In 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 8, Peter says, "Be sober of spirit and be on alert. Your adversary the devil prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour." That is what Satan is all about — lying, destruction, murder. He is a real creature, and that is very alarming. One of the last Barna surveys I saw indicated that something like sixty-seven percent of those who said they were born-again Christians did not believe Satan was real. What an advantage that is for Satan. He is a real creature who is bent on your real destruction.
Martin Luther said that there is no equal found among men to Satan. He is not God — we do not want to elevate him to that — but he is stronger than you. And he comes to the woman in verse 1 and says, "Indeed, really?"
The Serpent's Deception
"Did God really say this? Did God really say you should not eat from any tree of the garden?" Eve corrects him. She did not have this information directly — not yet created at the time of the command, this is something Adam had imparted to her, or perhaps God had told her in some unrecorded exchange — but somehow she received the message. "The fruit of the tree of the garden we may eat, but from the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said you should not eat it or touch it, lest you die."
Some love to show a progression in the serpent's approach. He opens with a question designed to plant doubt, and then Eve begins to add to the Word of God, because God did not say anything about touching it — He simply said, "If you eat it, you will die." Scholars make much of that addition. Whether that is a legitimate application is debatable, but what is certain is that the serpent then moves from subtle suggestion to bold, direct contradiction.
In the midst of what appears to be an alluring, caring, "I am here for you" attitude, the serpent says something that flatly contradicts God: "You shall not die." His argument is that God has an agenda. God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, you will be like Him, knowing good and evil. There is the temptation — Satan, guns blazing, seeking to sow rebellion in the human heart.
Satan's Standard Operating Procedure
He always takes the same path. 1 John 2:16 tells us: "All that is of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but it is from the world." Look at verse 6 and you will see every one of those categories present. The woman saw that the tree was good for food — the lust of the flesh. It was a delight to the eyes — aesthetically pleasing. And it was desirable to make one wise — the boastful pride of life. Satan covers all three fronts.
He is very confident in this approach. In fact, a study of the temptation of Jesus reveals that Satan tempts Him in exactly these same three areas: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. This is Satan's standard operating procedure, and he has been running it since the garden.
We have no time frame for how long this temptation played out. We do not know if it was a day, a week, or an hour. My suspicion is that once the serpent spoke, that one single tree in the middle of paradise suddenly had an enormous draw for Eve. She was thinking about it, contemplating it — just the way it works with sin. You rarely simply go and sin. The really significant ones have to be planned, thought through, arranged. You scheme and figure out when no one will be home, when no one will be there, how no one will find out.
The Nature of All Sin
Finally, in verse 6, Eve sees that it is good for food, that it is a delight to the eyes, and that it will make her wise. She took the fruit, ate it, gave it also to her husband, and he ate. It is important to understand that this is not about nutrition. It is not about the food itself. There was nothing wrong with that fruit — the problem was not the fruit. The moment God designated that one tree as off-limits, Eve was confronted with a single defining question: would she submit to God's will, or her own?
That is what all sin is about. Every sin is a person saying, "I am going to do my thing, and never mind You, God. I am the exception to this rule. I can see how this might be destructive for many, how it could be hurtful to some — but they are not as mature, not as strong, not as intellectually capable as I am. I can handle this." That is the voice beneath every act of disobedience.
The Immediate Consequences of Sin
What is man's reaction once he has sinned? Verse 7 tells us: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings." This is the first record of abnormal behavior in all of human history, and the cause of it is sin. One moment there was innocence and ease; the next, an acute awareness of vulnerability.
What Adam and Eve do in response is something remarkably religious. They decide to cover themselves up. They grab fig leaves and fashion coverings. The reaction to sin is to hide.
Hiding from God
They hear God coming, they recognize it, and they hide. Verse 8 tells us they hid themselves. They are driven away — they want nothing to do with the one true God. This raises a larger question worth sitting with: why is there so much confusion about God in the world? Part of the answer is that we follow our own hunches, and there are many reasons for that, but one of them is that we do not want to deal with our own sinfulness.
The moment a person genuinely understands that the God of the Bible exists — holy, meaning altogether other than us — they find themselves in the same position Isaiah found himself in. Once you see Him, you will say, "Woe to me, for I am undone." That is why humanity keeps creating and recreating God in its own image. We want a god who does not send people to hell, a god who understands that mistakes happen, a god who works just fine for our purposes. We will grant him enough authority to call him God, but it will not be a very capital-G God. And so we hide, just as Adam and Eve hid.
God's Three Questions
God then confronts them with three questions: "Where are you?" "Who told you that you were naked?" and "Did you eat from this tree?" The first question — "Where are you?" — is not God seeking information. God knows exactly where they are. That question serves an entirely different purpose.
Where Are You?
There is a strange thing that happens when someone is driving to your house, twenty minutes late, and they call to say they don't know where they are, driving in circles. They ask, "How do I get to your house?" But before you can tell them how to get to your house, you need to know where they are. That is exactly the question God asks Adam: "Where are you?" They had shared this beautiful moment of communion and communication, and now Adam is hiding in a bush somewhere, covered in fig leaves. How in the world did he get there?
Maybe you are right there today. Maybe you are all messed up and you know it. In your heart of hearts, God is calling out to you saying, "Where are you at this very moment?" And you are looking around thinking, how in the world did I get here? How did I get in the middle of this mess? You have to understand that, because once you understand where you are, God can tell you how to get to Him.
Adam's Excuses — and Ours
God shifts here from prosecuting attorney to defense attorney pretty quickly. Adam is confronted, and you have to admit this humanly — there is in your heart a sense of sympathy for him. There are not many excuses available to him, yet we are pretty good at finding them, aren't we? We live in a society where we are always victims and never villains.
Adam did not have that opportunity. He could not say, "Well, it's my parents," or "I'm a victim of my socioeconomic background," or "If I had not gone to a certain school, I would have never turned out this way." He does not have those options. So what does he say? The old joke lands right there: "It's the woman You gave me." Then it goes to the woman, and she says it's the serpent that God created.
How interesting our thought pattern is. Even in the midst of our sin, there is a sense in which we are saying, "God, it's really Your fault — You made her, You made it." We may take some blame, but the implication is that it really goes back to God.
God's Verdict and the First Promise
God begins to deal with all of those things. He says to the serpent in verse 14, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the cattle and the beast, you will crawl on your belly." Then in verse 15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you on the head, and you will bruise him on the heel." There is an amazing picture here of the virgin birth of Christ — her seed, Christ, who will appear and be wounded in a way that is not fatal, and who will ultimately destroy Satan.
For the woman, God says He will increase her pain in childbirth, and her desire will still be for her husband. He is going to put in her heart a desire to compete with the serpent for control of the family. And to Adam, God says that he is going to work, and that the whole world around him is going to suffer as a result of this.
Covered by Skin, Not Leaves
Then in verse 21, the Lord made garments from the skin for Adam and Eve, and He clothed them. Leviticus chapter 11, verse 17 says, "It is the blood that makes atonement for the soul." Satan's standard operating procedure is to come at us with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. When we sin, our reaction is guilt, hiding, and trying to find some way to cover ourselves. But God's reaction is that something is going to die so that you can live.
This is a beautiful picture, and it involves just a small animal. God did not get the skin of these animals by gently coaxing them out of their hides. He kills them. They are gone. Here is death — death now entering the world. And now God provides this covering. Do you see that picture? Man's fig leaves represent religion. God's skin represents Jesus Christ, the atonement, the promise that is right there in Genesis 3.
Everything Was Affected
Sin enters the world in Genesis 3, and all that we see around us is affected by it. Al Mohler writes: "The fall was not just an individual piccadillo. It changed everything. When sin entered into the experience of the cosmos, everything was affected. Thus, when God pronounced His verdict against Adam, He tells him that even the earth has now become hostile. It will fight against Adam for its harvest. Adam will have to work hard for the earth, and the earth will not yield its product to him willingly. Moreover, the pain of childbirth — Eve will be reminded of the fall and of her sin. Even in the glorious generation of life, there will be the sharp reminder of humanity's fallenness. Finally, because of their sin, Adam and Eve will be expelled from paradise. What God had for them and for us was lost. We are blocked from seeing it, prevented from experiencing it — that is what God truly had for us — and prohibited from eating of the tree of life."
That is the result of the fall.
Death Spread to All Men
Now we turn to Romans chapter 5. Look at verse 12: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all have sinned." When we look around, we see the universal condition of mankind — all of us have sinned. The question is, what is the extent of that sin's effect on our lives?
Did that sin merely make us sick, like with a cold? Did it make us truly ill, as though we have cancer? Did it render us almost incapacitated, immobile from the neck down? Here is what the Bible says: the wage of sin is death. The Bible tells us that we were dead in our sins and trespasses. We were dead.
If we are going to talk about God's plan for salvation, the key is what we have just looked at. How did we get this way? It is through Adam's sin.
The Spiritual Death We Inherited
The Bible tells us that when Adam sinned, he plunged all of us into this situation. No one is exempt. And haven't you seen the reality of that? That is why I believe this is an actual story. I do not believe this is a myth or a fable or a parable that was developed to try to convince some ancient mind of some complex truth they could not possibly comprehend. If you trace it all back, I guarantee you, we are all going to go back to this original couple, Adam and Eve.
When Adam sinned, he plunged all of us into ruin. That is why, when you have little kids, you have never once had to sit down and teach them how to lie — they know it. Or how to steal — they know it. You have to teach them to tell the truth. You have to teach them to keep their hands off other people's things. Why? Because we all sin.
Dead, Not Just Sick
So what is the effect of that sin? The effect is that we are dead spiritually. We are dead to spiritual things. Not just sick. Not just really, really sick. We are dead. What we will learn next week is something that I think you instinctively know, and if you have been through this series before, you know it intellectually as well. There is a vast difference between being dead and mostly dead, because if I am mostly dead, I am still alive. That distinction is the key.
Once I understand that I am truly dead — that there is nothing I can do — then for me to understand the gospel, respond to the gospel, and believe the gospel, something has to happen to me. Something outside of me has to come and touch me and change me. And that something is God Himself. We will pick up right there next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for this amazing, wonderful truth — a truth that we admit is sometimes counterintuitive, not necessarily what we would instinctively believe, but one that Your Word clearly teaches. Thank You that You have opened our eyes to see this truth. For those who are here for whom this is familiar territory, God, do not let us miss the awe and wonder of Your grace and mercy.
For those who are still searching — perhaps like the email we read at the beginning, saying they are not sure — God, I pray that You would give them a tenacity to study Your Word and let Your Word speak to this issue. Not what we think, not what we feel, not even what we have been taught in the past, but what does Your Word say about our condition? God, we are dead, and life comes through Jesus and Him alone. We thank You for that and we praise You in His name. Amen.