The Terrible Lie

What we started talking about last week with our first Sunday of this series that we’re doing called God’s Big Story is that God created this world to be a place where His image bears, you and me, would be able to know Him deeply and be able to spread His image throughout the entire world. Starting with the garden, but encompassing an entire globe, a place that He made for His glory, a place that is filled with His glory, a place that sings of His glory.

Imagine that world. Imagine being Adam or Eve placed in a garden. It’s utterly fruitful. It is primed to bloom. It is ideal in every way. This is paradise. That’s where they were. That was God’s design for this world. In fact, it was so good, God called it very good. It’s like good, good. It doesn’t get any better. It’s like milkshake on your back porch in the middle of July or whatever is very good for you. That’s the world that God created there to be. That’s the world that Adam and Eve inhabited.

What would that very good world look like for you today? What would represent paradise for you? It didn’t take that and blow it out of the water because any sort of imagination that we could have about a world not touched with sin even falls short because our imaginations are touched with sin. This world that was perfect and ideal in every way. But one day, one day, everything changed.

The serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it or you will die.’” “No, no, you will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. You’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it.

From these opening verses of Genesis chapter 3, where we are continuing our series this morning, we are introduced to corruption. Corruption is the type of world that we live in today. We live in an experience called the fall. So immediately out of Genesis chapter 3, you are introduced to the serpent. And I’ve got a question, who’s the serpent? In Revelation 12 verse 9, it says, “The great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world.” Jesus in John chapter 8 says this, “He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in Him. When He tells a lie, He speaks from His own nature because He is a liar and the father of lies.”

So as you and I are reading Genesis chapter 3, we have the benefit of being in this time. As we’re reading the past and we see the serpent approach Eve, we ought to know that he will lie, he will slander, he will work against Eve’s good and God’s glory. And he tells a lie. The lie he tells is that you can be like God on your own. You can be like God on your own. That’s the lie that he has for Eve. That’s the lie that he has for us.

If you’re taking notes, you see a couple things that Satan does here. First, we see that Satan twists. He twists God’s word by asking, “Did God really say?” This naturally would force doubt into Eve’s mind as she has to recall what exactly God said. She’s all of a sudden on the defensive as Satan is poking and prodding and twisting God’s word. Then Satan contradicts God’s word. “No, you won’t die.” Then he offers something else. He says, “In fact, God knows when you eat, you’ll be like Him.” Satan twists God’s word. He contradicts God’s word. Then he offers something outside of God’s word.

After creating room for doubt about God’s word, Satan attacks Eve’s resolve about God’s character. It’s like Satan looks at Eve and says, “God is not good. He’s not gracious. He is selfish. He’s deceptive. He’s preventing you from achieving what You deserve. That is His lie. God is holding you back. By offering a way for Adam and Eve to become like God through their own actions, Satan was really offering autonomy. This ability to totally live independent of God. That’s what Satan was offering Adam and Eve. When he says, “Take a bite of this fruit,” we don’t have to deliberate about what the fruit is. And he says, “God, He’s lying to you.” That, he’s offering something more than just a bite of fruit. He’s offering a life outside of God’s authority. The ability to live according to your own knowledge. And who of us doesn’t experience that lie every day? Satan is making the same offer to you tomorrow morning when you look at that person at work and you don’t want to treat them with respect and honor. He’s making that same offer to you when you feel slighted by somebody. He makes that same offer to you every single day. God’s withholding. He’s holding back. He doesn’t have your good. Be like Him instead. That’s what God was, or that’s what Satan, excuse me, was offering Adam and Eve.

And a couple in these opening verses have a number of failures. And it breaks my heart to see this. Because first, Eve, she saw. She saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at. It was desirable for obtaining wisdom. And on the surface, that doesn’t look so bad. But when the text says that she sees it’s good, she puts herself in God’s position. Because who declared things to be good back in Genesis 1? That was God. God was the one that said, “Let there be light.” There was light. God said, “It is good.” God is the one that said, “Let there be lands.” Then there was land. And God said, “It is good.” Eve says, “There is fruit. I like that. It is good.” Eve is already seeing. And she’s failing.

Then she took the fruit and she ate some. I think the actual moment of the fall happens right there. Not necessarily in the temptation of desire, but in the acting on the desire. This bite is a commitment to her own wisdom, her own knowledge. Sounds weird to say, but a pursuit of godlessness. Imagine pursuing a life without God when God is your literal dad. Rejecting Him as your father. One Bible author puts it this way. Throughout Scripture, the essence of sin is to put human judgment above God’s divine commands. That’s sin. And you and I do this every day. We put our judgment of what is right and wrong and good and bad above what God has already said. You and I experience the same stuff every day.

Eve, she saw, she took and ate, and then she gave. She gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. When I read the Bible and I see that Adam was with her, I think he was with her the whole time. The serpent slithers up to Eve and makes this offer and twist and contradicts and all this. And Adam’s right there. She gives him some fruit. Adam, his failure in this whole thing, just stood there. Adam stood by. 1 Timothy 2:14 says this, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. Think about it. Adam is standing there. The Bible says he wasn’t deceived. What does that mean? He should have stopped her. He saw through what Satan was doing. He understood. Wait, he’s lying. She’s being deceived. He is offering something else. She doesn’t quite get it. And he’s just silent. He just stands there. She’s deceived. He is a dope. They were doomed. That was their situation.

So Adam and Eve have put their judgment over God’s. What happens next? Corruptions, consequences. These are terrible verses. There’s four consequences that come in these verses. Four results from the couple’s sin. And the first one is that they’ve got shame. Verse 7 says that the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. While God originally designed us to be naked and free, as the Bible says, as the Bible says, when sin entered the world, Satan’s corruption brings shame to our bodies. We didn’t read this last week, but chapter 2, verse 25 says that both the man and the woman were naked, yet felt no shame. Imagine a world where that’s true, where you could be naked with somebody else 24-7 and feel no shame. You could be totally free. That is the world they lived in. And Satan offers something else, this Way of self-freedom. And what happens when they choose that self-freedom? They choose shame. That’s what enters the world. Shame is, as Martin Mancer in the Bible Dictionary of Terms says, an uncomfortable feeling of guilt and humiliation, usually arising from sin or failure. That is shame. That’s what’s entered the world. And here’s the thing. You and I, we all feel shame today. For a host of reasons, for a variety of causes, we could talk about that, but you and I, we feel shame. And this is where that comes from. Shame comes from sin. It comes from the fall. It comes from this failure to trust God at His word.

And after the couple is ashamed, then they start to hide from God, that next consequence. Adam and Eve, they look like children who’ve done something wrong. Kids running from a living room after they broke the vase, snuck cookies out of the jar, painted on the new couch, and woke up the sleeping baby all at the same time. I don’t know anything about that. They are hiding in the same trees that God provided to give them food. They’re running to these trees. They’re afraid of God. And you and I, we do the same thing. You and I, we conceal our sin, don’t we? We try to hide from God. We resist confessing things to Him. That is our situation.

I distinctly remember in college, freshman year, and so I met Jesus as a 15-year-old in high school. I had done stuff prior, and I did stuff after. And I never really worked through these things that I had done. And I’m in college, freshman year, and I’ve got this buddy, he’s a little older, and I’m trying to talk with him about it. And it’s like invasive surgery is what it feels like. And he says, Jeremy, have you ever actually prayed about this stuff? And that was the most terrifying and illuminating question I could have been asked. Because I was hiding something that was true about me from God, and that did not bring freedom. And I just want to encourage you, don’t conceal. Don’t hide from God. Don’t try to keep things away from Him. He wants to help you process things. He wants to help you move past things, but you have to get with Him and be honest.

And that’s Adam and Eve’s situation. They feel shame. They hide from Him. Ultimately, because of the third consequence, they’ve got a fear of Him. They’re scared of God. They’re deathly afraid of the one that’s made them. But God, being a good dad, pursues Adam and Eve. He approaches them. He tries to find them. He knows something’s not right. He’s omniscient. He knows everything. He already knows what’s happened. He’s asking them these questions, and He’s not trying to figure out who done it. That’s not God here. What God’s trying to do is God’s trying to encourage them to just fess up. He’s saying, hey, I loved you. I’m your dad. Where are you? Any parents in the room ever ask that question? Hey, Johnny. Hey, can you come over here for a minute? You see something’s wrong? Hey, Johnny. I noticed this is broken. Let’s talk about that. You know what happened there? As a parent, most of the time you already know. You’re just trying to get the kid to talk about it. That’s God here. He’s just trying to get His kids to talk.

But instead of fessing up, the fourth consequence, they just go to blame shifting. Both Adam and Eve blame someone else for their own actions. And our hearts, like Adam and Eve’s, need confession and self-exposure. This is another quote by Kenneth Matthews. He says that, there will be no possibility for reconciliation if the guilty are unwilling to confess their deeds. No possibility. A relationship that’s been broken by sin can’t be fixed by hiding the sin. It can’t be fixed by sweeping under the rug. It can’t be fixed by ignoring. It can’t be fixed by just letting time pass. A relationship that’s actually been broken by sin has to be dealt with. And guilt has to be confessed. Sin has to be exposed.

But don’t just take my word for it. The Bible speaks about this, conveniently or inconveniently, depending on where you are. Psalm 32 verse 5 says, Proverbs 28 verse 13, 1 John 1 verse 9 says, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us. To cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The Bible wants you to confess. But don’t just take my opinion or the Bible’s. Maybe Mr. Rogers will do it for you. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, anybody remember that?

He says, “Honesty is often very hard. The truth is painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth trying.” What’s not known about Mr. Rogers is that he was also a pastor, and he understood a thing or two about being honest and being truthful. Here’s the deal: confession is not just something God wants from Adam and Eve. It’s something He wants for Adam and Eve. Not just something He wants from you. It’s something He wants for you. So I just want to say, there may be some of us in the room right now that recognize there is something that they need to talk with God about. Please don’t go to bed tonight without talking to Him about that. If there’s something you need to confess to God—something you’ve said, something you haven’t said, something you’ve done, something you haven’t done—and you know what it is, I want you, please, I’m begging you, take a few moments with God today. Talk about that with Him, because He wants to give you freedom. Concealing that, that’s not freedom.

Adam and Eve both blame shift away from themselves when God knew what they did. He wanted them to come clean. He wanted them to separate themselves from sin. But instead they lied. They blame shifted. They separated themselves from God. And immediately what we see is that through following Satan’s advice, the couple did gain knowledge. They did get a better understanding of good and bad. But that did not provide the way to freedom. The four consequences of Satan’s corruption are terrible, and we still feel them every day. But God’s response to Satan are the most powerful words of this chapter. Let’s listen to them: “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock, more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head and you will strike His heel.’”

Unlike how God approached Adam and Eve with questions to elicit confession, God has no questions for the serpent. He’s only got three statements. The first one is He curses. The serpent is negatively set apart from all the other animals. Last week we saw that God blessed Adam and Eve, which is like this divine seal of approval. It’s two thumbs up. This desire to bless and give favor toward. To be cursed then would be the opposite. It’d be two thumbs down. It’s this desire to oppress, this desire to keep down. And Satan, immediately we see as the serpent moves on its belly, eating dust. Man, no one’s proud on their belly, right? No one can lift themselves up over another. No one can boast in themselves laying on their stomach. That’s the serpent.

God curses the serpent. Then He does the second thing: He instills hostility. The serpent has hostility from the woman and her family. Like warfare between nations that will never be at peace, there will always be a grudge between Eve’s family and the serpent. The Bible uses this word offspring, seed. In Genesis 1, we see that trees bear seeds. In Genesis 3, we see that a family bears seeds. As you are reading your Old Testament, especially following Genesis 3, immediately with Genesis 4, you ought to be asking the question: is this the offspring that’s going to defeat the serpent? Is this the offspring that’s going to bring true freedom? Is it going to be Abraham? No, he fails. Is it going to be David? No, David fails. Is it going to be anybody? Can anybody defeat the serpent? Who is the seed? God has promised someone from Eve’s family will one day rise up and obey God the way that Adam and Eve were supposed to. And we will save that for next week, because there is a seed coming that does obey God and that does satisfy Him and that does love Him. He’s not in this chapter, though. This chapter is a promise. It’s a promise of a death blow.

The ultimate sign of who this seed would be is that they defeat the serpent. The serpent would strike that seed’s heel while the seed will strike the serpent’s head. A heel strike, that’s painful. That hurts. That might lay you up in the hospital. That might be a knee replacement. One of us knows something about that. But a head strike, that’s a mortal wound. The seed would come and deal death to the serpent. The serpent has corrupted mankind. But Eve’s offspring will save mankind. This is what Bible Scholars call the first gospel of the Bible. The first good news. And this is a sign for us as we’re reading it to remember the Bible is not about us. The Bible is about Jesus. It’s about the seed to come that will free us from the slavery we threw ourselves into by disobeying God. The Bible is about a hero to come. And that hero we’ll study next week.

So, in the wake of corruption, God promises the hero that Adam and Eve need. Then, God follows that promise with more consequences for Adam and Eve. Let’s read them now. He said to the woman, “I will intensify your labor pains. You will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.” And He said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it.’ The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. And you will eat the plants of the field. You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it—for you are dust. And you will return to dust.”

So, these promises of salvation to come are followed with more consequences for Adam and Eve because they rejected God’s opinion. They rejected His command. These are corruptions, consequences continued.

For the woman, we see pain in childbirth and discord in marriage. Children were supposed to multiply and fill the earth. That was God’s blessing and calling to them. But instead, childbirth pain multiplies. Marriage is supposed to be this intimate relationship where husband and wife would come together and let no man separate. But instead, discord and division and difficulty comes in. They started off naked and unashamed and they got to be clothed and arguing. That’s what Satan gave them.

For the man, he gained pain in his work. The earth was good. Now it’s cursed. It was primed to bear fruit. Now it’s got thorns and thistles. This reverse of God’s originally highly productive ground. The death that mankind suffers is now applied to the world.

Can anyone relate to this? Any ladies in the room ever have pain with childbearing? Any ladies in the room ever have pain with not childbearing? Any marriages in the room ever have a difficulty or a division? Anybody ever had pain because you’re not married? How about work? Ever had a thorn or a thistle where you expected a rose or an apple?

This is our story. We live post the cross. We live after Jesus has redeemed us. But for the ground, for our daily experience, we live in a Genesis 3 sort of a world. Every aspect of our existence has been touched by Satan’s lie. Think about it. Mental and emotional health, physical pain, relational dynamics, childbearing, work, our spiritual relationship with God, everything has been touched and tainted by sin.

Which takes me back to our core question we introduced last week. Why on earth am I here on the earth? We have that question because of our pain. You wake up in the morning and everything’s sore and it hurts. And you had an argument last night and things aren’t going well at work. And you’re thinking, what’s the point? Why am I here? What’s it all for?

I heard this quote by C.S. Lewis that God whispers to us in His pain, in our pain. Sorry. God whispers to us in pleasure, but He shouts to us in our pain. Because pain gets our attention. Pain introduces questions about who am I? What am I made for? What am I doing here? That’s the story of the Bible.

On top of everything, even Adam and Eve’s home would be corrupted. The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and He clothed them. The Lord God said, “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God sent him away from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.

In this passage, we were introduced to corruption with Satan’s lie. We saw corruption’s consequences with shame and hiding and fear. There was a promise of salvation from God, and then there was more of corruption’s consequences, and finally we see corruption causes separation. Separation between Adam and Eve and God. God exiles Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. He gives them protection in their exile, though. The text says that the Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and He clothed them. God exchanged the flimsy fig leaf cloths for clothes for animal skins, giving better, lasting protection. And I wonder every day as Adam and Eve looked down and they saw these deer hides or whatever it was, that they would be reminded both of their own sin and God’s grace. They never had to exchange these things, and that lasting protection came because of their lasting consequences. But God also protects them because of their exile. God says, “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out. Take from the tree of life, eat and live forever.” You have to ask yourself, why did God do that? You wonder, why did God do that? I’m convinced it was because He wanted to protect them from themselves. They’ve already shown that they can’t follow all of God’s rules. They’ve already shown that they are going to choose the bad when He’s offering them the good. And even in the midst of this, God wants to say, if they eat of the tree of life, they’ll be stuck in this state of sin forever. I’m not even going to give them the opportunity. I’m going to get them as far away from this tree as I possibly can. Because if they eat that fruit, they’ll never be able to change. So God sends them out of the garden. He protects them. In all of this, I’ve got one thing, and I saved my main point for the very end because I want this to be what you remember. Satan’s lie corrupted us. God’s grace will save us. His lie just corrupted. It offered freedom. It offered autonomy. It offered self-independence. But it just corrupted us. And God said, “I will save you.” He promised salvation. He wants to give grace to them. Satan’s lie still echoes today. Every one of us feels it. From the frustration that I had with my own kids this morning, something that’s going to happen five years from now, I don’t even know about. I feel it. None of us are perfect. None of us are untouched by sin in some capacity. Our church feels it. We see it in our towns and our communities. The lie from Satan is still echoing today. But the good news is that God’s promise of salvation echoes too. This morning, we’ve talked about a couple things. And I recognize the nature of what we’ve talked about may have unearthed something for you. And if that’s the case, I want to talk with you about that. During our invitational time, the last song, if you want to come and talk and chat about something, I’d love to make that happen. Or if there’s something else you want to talk about, joining the church or being baptized or taking a step of faith, let’s make that happen too. All right. We’re going to transition back to a time of worship as we’re closing the sermon. But before we do that, I want to pray for us. Lord, thank you. God, thank you for the grace that You offer, the grace that You promise. Lord, thank you for how You make a way for us to be forgiven. God, I’m sorry for the ways I disobey and I don’t trust. God, I’m asking that You would help me to be a better man at walking with You and trusting You. I’m asking that You would make our church a place, a family, a community that walks and trusts with You. Lord, I pray for any of us in the room right now that don’t know You yet. God, that we would turn our eyes to You, that we would love You, we would submit to You, we would accept You, we would cling to the grace and the salvation You want to offer. Lord, thank you.