“And I Ate”
The eighth in a series: “I Will be Your God and You Will Be My People.”
Texts: Genesis 3:1-19; Romans 8:18-25
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I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is very, very, bad. The good news is very, very, good. The bad news is that because of the events which once transpired in the Garden of Eden, the entire human race has come under God’s curse. Each one of us are guilty for Adam’s sinful act of rebellion in Eden every bit as much as we are guilty for our own sins against God. The consequences of this revolt are frightening. We are all guilty before God. We all face death and will appear before God in the judgement. But the good news is that God has not left us in this pitiful condition. He has sent his own dear son, Jesus, to deliver us from this sentence of death.
We resume our series on the unfolding drama of redemption “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Throughout this series we have been looking at the history of redemption as it unfolds in the pages of Holy Scripture. We began with the opening chapters of Genesis with God and creation. We will end in Revelation with the creation of a new heaven and earth. But one thing remains perfectly clear as we follow the story of redemption. God’s covenant promise stands firm. God will prepare a bride for his son, who will, in turn, bring all things into submission unto his father.
We pick up where we left off in Genesis chapter 3 with the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Recall that God placed Adam in Eden, which is God’s earthly temple-garden, and that place where man would dwell in the presence of God. God gave Adam the task of tending the garden and exercising his Lordship over all the creatures. God also gave to the man and the woman, the so-called cultural mandate through which the couple would fill the earth by being fruitful and multiplying. Adam was to rule and subdue Eden in the name of YHWH. He was to exercise dominion over all the creatures and complete God’s garden-temple so that he might enter God’s Sabbath rest. Satan, meanwhile, had other plans. If he can disrupt the completion of the garden-temple, he can postpone the day of judgment, and destroy the covenant relationship between YHWH and Adam.
During this period of probation, God gave Adam this commandment. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” This command underlies the covenant of works in which Adam is promised God’s blessing upon perfect obedience, while at the same time Adam is warned that if he violates the terms of the covenant, he will come under God’s curse. If Adam obeys God’s command–enjoying the fruit of all the lush trees in the garden–and abstains from the forbidden tree, Adam will bring the temple-garden to completion. He will be declared righteous and will enter into God’s Sabbath rest. But if Adam eats from the forbidden tree he will bring down the covenant curse upon himself, his wife and all of those whom he represents–all of humanity.
Created as divine image-bearers, God intended the man and woman to live forever. But man is mortal, and should he come under God’s curse, he will face death. Through violating the terms of the covenant, Adam will lose his original righteousness–which includes true knowledge of God, righteousness and holiness. Although Adam and his children will retain the divine image after the Fall, whatever remains is–as John Calvin so correctly points out–a frightful deformity. To violate the covenant of works is to bring disaster upon the whole human race. It is to reject God’s blessing and invoke God’s curse.
It is because Adam rebelled against God that we all face death. It is because of Adam’s rebellion that human relationships are fractured. It is because of Adam’s rebellion that work becomes toil and childbirth becomes painful. It is because of Adam’s rebellion that the paradise which was Eden is now the wilderness of life in a fallen and sinful world. It is because of Adam’s rebellion that God hates sin and sinful man hates the Holy God.
In the opening verses of Genesis chapter 3, Satan makes his first appearance in the drama of redemption. The serpent is one of the creatures over whom Adam was to exercise dominion. Somehow or another, this creature becomes the agent of Satan and the vehicle through which Satan enters Eden. We are told in verse 1, “now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.” This creature, subtle and shrewd as he is, allows himself to be taken in by God’s arch-enemy. The picture is one in which the serpent is willingly involved in Satan’s scheme to disrupt the completion of the earthly garden-temple. Because he allowed himself to be used as the mouthpiece of the devil, the serpent will also come under God’s curse.
We now come to the first question in the Bible. Though it comes from the mouth of the serpent and is directed to the woman, the words are clearly those of Satan. The question is a subtle attack upon the authority of God. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Immediately drawn into the devil’s scheme the woman promptly adds her own editorial comment to the serpent’s question, “we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
The woman has already fallen into the Satanic trap. She implies that God’s graciousness in giving her and her husband fruit from any of the trees in the garden save one, is really not all that gracious. By mentioning the command not to eat from the forbidden tree, the woman places the focus squarely upon the divine prohibition, not on God’s graciousness in allowing them to eat from any of the other trees. Satan has already succeeded. The gospel– “you may eat from any of the trees”–is now obscured by the law–“you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of God and evil.” It is Martin Luther who first reminded us that the Devil’s main weapon against Christians is his amazing ability to turn law into gospel and gospel into law.
Like a shark sensing blood in the water, the serpent quickly moves in for the kill. Having subtly challenged God’s authority by asking the seemingly innocuous question, “has God said?” Satan now directly attacks the authority of God’s word by contradicting God’s original warning. “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. With these words, Satan has demonstrated that he is exactly who Jesus says he is, the father of all lies. The issue is now a question of God’s word versus the word of Satan. Indeed, Satan’s point of attack is to lie about the consequences of eating the fruit. God says, “do not eat. For when you do, you will die.” Satan says, “you will not surely die.”
Having uttered a bold-faced lie, and seeing that no response was forthcoming from the woman, the Devil now tells an even bigger lie. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” First, Satan attacks God’s authority. Now, he attacks God’s character. You can just hear the sarcasm in his voice. “God is withholding the fruit of this tree from you, because he is not as gracious as you think he is. He knows that if you eat from this tree, you’ll become like him, `knowing good and evil.’” The fact that God has given the couple every other tree in the garden is now forgotten. The fact that God has promised life and Sabbath rest upon completion of God’s temple-garden is no longer the woman’s primary concern. God has said “if you obey you will live.” On the contrary, Satan promises that both life and enlightenment come through suicide. The big lie has been told and it has gone completely unchallenged. He has succeeded in placing the focus on the fact that God has forbidden them to eat from this one tree. What is God hiding?
From what follows it is perfectly clear that Adam’s response is not that of some poor individual who has been duped by an intellectual superior. Adam’s act of eating the fruit is an embrace of Satan’s lie. His is not an act of ignorance. It is an act of treason.
Being the subtle creature that he is, the serpent moves from the lie to the sensual image. Words give way to images. Lust for the forbidden arises in the human heart. The woman is ready to accept the word of the serpent over the word of God because, as we are told in verse 6, “when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” The sensual desire for the forbidden fruit wins out over God’s command to abstain. “Do not eat,” gives way to the declaration, “she took some and ate it.” The question became a lie. The lie became a rebellion. Life and original righteousness give way to death and shame.
In his first letter to Timothy, Paul gives us some very important information about what transpires next. In 1 Timothy 2:14, while addressing the question of a woman’s role in the church, Paul tells us that “Adam was formed first, then Eve.” “Adam,” Paul says, “was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” In Genesis 3 we are told that after the woman ate, “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Eve was deceived by the serpent. She has an excuse of sorts. No such thing can be said in Adam’s defense. He was not deceived. He ate in rebellion. His was an act of defiance. Therefore, as Adam took and ate he did so with a fist defiantly raised toward heaven. He has accepted Satan’s lie. “I want to be like God,” Adam demands. “I want to determine by own destiny and obey my own rules.” “I will be Lord of the garden, not YHWH.” Every death, every human calamity, every human sin, every human tear, was born in that moment.
The full extent of Satan’s treachery, the deception of the woman, as well as the gravity of Adam’s rebellion immediately becomes apparent. Spiritual suicide did not bring life nor enlightenment. Adam’s rebellion brought down the covenant curses upon the entire human race.
Though they had been seeking some kind of divine enlightenment by eating the forbidden fruit, the grim reality of the situation is now set forth in verse 7. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” Original righteousness was gone. The glory associated with the divine image had vanished. Shame took the place of innocence. The promise of life became the sentence of death. Once their eyes were opened, an expression which means that original righteousness was gone, “they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” In this pitiful act of covering their nakedness with leaves, the principle underlying all pagan and false religion was born. Having fallen into sin and under God’s curse, humanity no longer sees the need for the righteousness of God–sinful man’s assumption being that we are perfectly capable of providing a means of covering our nakedness before God through the actions of our hands. It is not far–theologically speaking–from fig leaves to all forms of works righteousness and religious spirituality.
Not only was original righteousness now gone, and the man and his wife felt the need to cover their nakedness in each other’s presence, there was an even bigger problem. If they were ashamed to be naked in each other’s presence, what will happen in the presence of YHWH? It was not long before they found out the awful consequences of their rebellion. “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” God had come to Eden to execute covenant judgment, just as he had promised he would do if the terms of the covenant of works were ever disobeyed. The very thought of what they had done turned the joy of God’s presence into the fear of his holiness. Everything was turned upside down. The frightening reality was beginning to set in. They were now under God’s curse. They must hide.
But one thing remains unchanged, even after Adam’s rebellion in the garden. It is God who is ever-merciful, and who in his grace and forbearance, now seeks the sinful couple hiding in the garden.
In verse 9 we find these haunting words, “the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” Adam’s answer betrays the gravity of his act. “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” No longer clothed in the glory of original righteousness, sinful man will from this day forth fear–indeed loathe–the presence of the holy God. The man and woman hid from God, and men and women have hidden from God ever since. There is no one, says Paul, who seeks God. Rather, it is God who seeks sinners, just as he does here in Eden. If the covenant relationship between Adam’s sinful race and the holy God is to ever be restored, God must be reconciled to man, and man to God. The only means by which this two-way reconciliation can take place is through the cross of Jesus Christ. God called out to Adam that day, “where are you?” He has been calling sinners to repentance ever since. “Come unto me you who are weary, and I will give you rest.”
Executing the sanctions of the covenant curse, the interrogation now begins. “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” It should be perfectly clear that God is not asking these questions because he doesn’t know what has happened. He asks these questions because he is the covenant judge about to execute the covenant curse upon the guilty.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this whole account is the sequence which follows. Here, we see one of the most basic principles of human sin–one sin always seems to lead to another, and the whole time the consequences become greater and greater. Even though Adam is totally at fault and fully responsible for his actions, his answer to God’s questions shows how rapidly the consequences of sin multiply. He will blame everyone–including God–for what has just happened. Adam will not take responsibility.
When asked about the discovery of his nakedness, Adam’s answer is simply unbelievable. “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Whether or not Moses intended this to be humorous, it is. None of this was Adam’s fault, it was the woman’s! She did it! She was deceived and she made me eat. What is more, not only was it the woman’s fault that Adam ate, it was really God’s fault because “you put her here with me!” What a coward! But this is what sin does to us. We cannot except the consequences for our wrong doing so we start looking for excuses.
The woman does no better. She simply follows Adam’s example. “Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” If Adam was going to blame the woman, the woman would, in turn, blame the serpent. Men and women have been passing the buck and blaming each other ever since. On that day the pitiful excuse, “the devil made me do it,” was born. It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now.
It is perfectly clear that Adam is regarded as the responsible party in this whole sequence of events. If Adam had eaten first, the woman could simply say, “I did what my husband told me to do.” The woman was deceived. Adam was not. When Eve ate from the tree, it was only because Adam did not drive the serpent from the garden. Therefore, in some sense, Adam’s rebellion began well before he ate the fruit. It began when Adam neglected his covenental headship and allowed the serpent to approach the woman, thereby exposing her to Satanic deception. The result of this neglect was the pronunciation of the covenant curse, as well as the apparent failure of God’s kingdom rule. Adam lost his dominion the very moment he decided not to exercise it. As in the military when a high-ranking officer is held responsible for the conduct of his subordinates even if he is ignorant of it, so too, God holds the covenant head responsible for the conduct of those under his authority. To this day, it remains a biblical principle that the man is responsible to God for the state of his household. It is our duty, men, to drive the serpent from our homes, whenever he enters our sphere of influence. In this culture, your computer and television have become his primary tools. If you are not catechizing your family, Hollywood or some anonymous name in a chat room will do it for you.
With the gravity of their actions now fully out in the open, YHWH pronounces the covenant curses upon Satan and his agent, the serpent, upon the woman and upon the man.
God had been merciful with Adam and Eve, giving them a chance to repent for their sinful actions. The serpent is given no such opportunity. The divine sentence summarily pronounced upon him in verse 14. “So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.” Though some have interpreted this to mean that the serpent originally walked upright, only to become a snake after the curse was pronounced, the context indicates that it is not the mode of the transportation which changes, walking to crawling, but that the serpent is now disdained by all the creatures. He will now crawl in shame, not in shrewdness.
The curse upon the serpent is also a curse upon Satan. Satan will be crushed, his plans will not succeed, God’s purposes will come to pass. Therefore, it is on the heels of the proclamation of the curse upon the serpent, that God promises that the serpent’s final undoing will result in the salvation of Adam’s fallen race. Salvation will come through the seed of the woman. No sooner is the curse pronounced do we find the first proclamation of the gospel: “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.” On this tragic day when God pronounced his sentence of judgment upon the man, the woman and Satan, God also promises a glorious day when the consequences of Adam’s sin will be undone.
With the curse now pronounced upon the serpent, God pronounces the curse upon the woman. “To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Eve is the mother of all living. Her divinely-appointed task was to be fruitful and multiply. But as a consequence of the curse, she will now do so in physical torment and travail. Furthermore, her divinely appointed role as companion to her husband will too often be distorted from submission to a faithful covenant head, to subjugation to a cruel and faithless tyrant. Machismo and the exploitation of women come as a result of the curse. The price of deception is high indeed.
Adam, too, will come under covenant judgement. “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of 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.” God’s punishment always fits the crime. God created man to exercise dominion over all the creatures and to tend the garden, bringing God’s temple to completion. Instead, the ground will now exercise dominion over Adam. Work becomes toil. Weeds and thistles will appear where there had only been lush vegetation. Adam will taste death before he enters God’s Sabbath rest. Soul will be torn from body and Adam will return to the dust. The earth now takes dominion over the man. The tragic irony of it all.
The tragic events in Eden serve as the backdrop for all of subsequent redemptive history. From this point forward God will seek Adam’s fallen children, protecting the promised seed against the wiles of Satan. For a deliverer will come and he will not only redeem Adam’s fallen children, he will crush Satan under his heal.
Though our focus has been the fall and the consequences of Adam’s sin, next week, Lord willing, we will turn our focus to this glorious promise of redemption known as the proto-evangelium, or the first gospel promise. We must hear the bad news before the good news makes sense. We must understand the human predicament before we understand what it cost Jesus Christ to redeem us. We must see the gravity of our sin and guilt to understand the curse and the sentence of death.
As the drama of redemption plays out, we will repeatedly see that Satan’s standard line of attack is to challenge the authority of God’s word. First, he raises doubts about God’s word. Next, he lies about what God has said, turning truth upon its head. Satan is the father of all heresy, and always finds a way to turn God’s graciousness into a reason for men and women to hate him all the more. Let me take a couple of examples. When God gives humanity the gift of marriage, Satan is there to tell us that marriage just gets in the way of sexual freedom. When God gives us all that we need for body and soul, Satan tells us that this is not enough. Our wants exceed our needs. We covet, we steal, we lust after that which is not ours. It is Satan–playing on fallen human nature–who turns God’s commandments, and there are only ten of them mind you, into archaic and unfair restrictions which limit human freedom and experience. The Devil is master at this. Never, never, underestimate him!
The primary lesson from Genesis 3, must be understood by every person reading. When Adam ate from the forbidden tree, you ate with him. I ate with him. We ate with him. When Adam rebelled against God, you rebelled against God, I rebelled against God. We rebelled against God. When Adam’s eyes were opened and his innocence lost, our eyes were opened and our innocence was lost. When Adam and his wife were aware of their nakedness, their shame is now ours. When Adam lost his original righteousness, we lost original righteousness, the glory of the divine image now frightfully deformed. When Adam died, we died. Human sin and weakness are not part of creation. They are part of the fall. We cannot escape these things no matter how many fig leaves we sew together to cover our nakedness.
There is only one person who can turn this horrible curse into a glorious blessing. It will take a second Adam to undo what the first Adam has done. It will take the seed of the woman to crush the Devil’s head and bring about our salvation. It will take the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ to overturn our sentence of death and undo the human predicament.
In light of our sinful condition, this is why the apostle Paul exhorts us to look forward to the great and glorious day when the effects of the curse will be undone. One day soon, Jesus Christ will return to earth, to judge the world, raise the dead, and make all things new. In Romans 8:18-25, Paul writes, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
As we wait patiently for the renewal of all things and the undoing of the curse, let us not forget that in his grace, God gives us a foretaste of what is yet to come. In Eden, God told Adam “do not eat.” Adam ate anyway. Now that Christ has come, ratifying a new and better covenant in his own blood, things are different. God has a different word for us. He does not say to us, “do not eat.” Rather, to all those longing for the day of redemption, our blessed savior Jesus himself, says to us, “take and eat, this is my body broken for you.”
It is our Lord’s body, bruised and broken for us, which crushes the head of Satan and secures our eternal redemption. Because of our sin we are barred from Eden and the tree of life. But, if we are Christ’s, we are not barred from this table. For this table reminds us that one day the curse will be removed, paradise will be regained, and that once more righteousness will reign! Amen!