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The Fall into Sin
BD18-01© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)
This morning we come to the actual fall of humanity into sin. We have seen that Satan has entered
a perfect environment in a restored earth. Man was placed In the Garden of Eden and Satan entered it in order to
arrest control of the restored earth from man. Now he realizes that he cannot get to this man who is doctrinally
oriented, so he concludes that he must approach him through another
agent, namely his wife. So, he comes into the
garden in the disguise of a very beautiful animal, the serpent, to use
this animal as the agent against Eve and then to use Eve against Adam. His intention is to cause the woman to go
negative to the will of God and to go positive to his own will. In order to do this, he must, as always,
plant a false idea into the mentality of her soul.
That’s why we say that the greatest virtue, the most
important thing in the Christian life is the learning of Bible doctrine
on a regular daily basis. This gives you
God’s point of view. If you have not
already had this experience, you will discover as you get into the Word, that
your taste for resisting god will be less and less. The only way
Satan ever gets you to go negative toward the will of God
and toward of plan of God for your life is by an idea he places into
your mind.
In order to get this woman, he had to put her on negative
volition. He had to put some false
notions, which we call human viewpoint today, into her mind. So
he focuses her attention on the forbidden
tree, and he does this by pretending to be surprised that God should
not have permitted them to eat of all the trees of the garden, and
that’s his approach. He actually says to her, “Is
it a fact that God will not allow you to eat of all the trees of the
garden?” The woman is apparently careless about doctrine.
So, if you’ll open your Bibles again to Genesis chapter 3,
we’ll pick up the story at verse 2. The
serpent is there, the scene is set, and the question has been asked. Now
the question has been asked in order to
raise a doubt in the woman’s mind. That’s
the first step—just to get the first faint flicker of a
doubt, and just to get her thinking over, “Maybe there is something here.”
Satan still works like this. You’ll
often have Christians who come up to you and say, “What do
you think about brother or sister so-and-so?” “What
do you think about what so-and-so s thinking?” What do you think
about what this person has said?” This
will appeal, of course, to your pride
because you’ll view yourself as someone very important with
something to say.
So, this is what Satan is doing. He’s
coming along and he’s punching a little
doubt into this woman’s mentality. Verse
2 is her answer, “And the woman said unto the serpent,
‘We may eat of the fruit
of the trees of the garden.’” This
is a true statement. In it, she recognized
that God had placed them into a perfect environment that provided for
their every human need and for their personal pleasure. However,
we will soon see that she will use
her will to reject what God has provided. Many believers
live in spite of God’s provision. Therefore,
they’re out of phase with the provision
and plan of God in their lives.
This woman makes a true statement, “God has provided us a
perfect environment and we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden.” She goes on in verse 3, “But of the fruit of
the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said,
‘Ye shall not eat of it.’” That much is true. But
you will notice that she adds something that God did not say. For she adds the
words, “… neither shall ye touch it, lest ye
die.” This is the first tinge of negative volition
beginning to rise within the soul of the woman. She has also done
something else that you will notice in verse 3. She
has picked up Satan’s name for God.
As we pointed out last week, Satan uses the name for God
which is “Elohim.” God’s
name, as Eve has known it, has been the name of “The LORD God,”
or “Jehovah Elohim.” She didn’t’ know God by any other name. The
term “Jehovah” represents “savior,” and
the word “Elohim” represents God in his sovereignty. So
this term represents the sovereign savior God that she knew. Specifically, she
knew God in the person of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, who is the
one who met them in the Garden as the creator and who taught them doctrine. She
didn’t know God by any other name except “Jehovah
Elohim.” Satan comes along and crosses
off “Jehovah” and just says
“Elohim,” because “Elohim”
implies a supreme being, and Satan is in favor of people thinking a supreme being, because
that’s how he wants them to think about him. He wants
to be the Supreme Being. That’s how he wants to be like God.
So, she picks up a name that she is not acquainted with,
relative to God, and again there’s another little faint
flicker of doubt beginning to bear its bitter fruit in this woman’s
mind—doubt against what God
has taught, doubt against here teacher—the person of the
Lord, and doubt against her own husband whose position is that God is right and we are
obedient to his restrictions.
So, she says, “If you touch this tree,” and referring
to God as nothing more than the Supreme Being, “you’ll
die.” Now this is distorting the Word of God. She is suggesting
that the tree is poisonous to the touch, but death is not in the property of the tree at all. Death
is in the negative volition to the will of God, and the tree is just the testing point. It is simply some
tree with some kind of fruit that was a testing point,
no different from any other tree in the garden except that God says,
“This one tree here in the middle of the garden you are not to eat of.”
There was only one sin that they could have committed in the
Garden of Eden, and that was the sin of negative volition. That’s
the only sin they could have done, to say,
“No” to what God said to do or what not to do. So, consequently,
here was the testing point.
But she reveals that she has responded to the surprise
observation of Satan, with a certain doubt in her own mind toward God. She’s
actually converting her doubt into a
little bit of complaint. “Yes,
God says we can’t eat of this tree. As
a matter fact we can’t even touch it.” This
was not true. Why would she distort the Word?
Well, this is what we do when we want to bolster some idea
that we have of being treated unjustly. We feel we have
an injustice to declare. We begin to
bolster by distorting the facts a little bit in order to
make our case appear a good deal stronger than it is. Mental
attitude sins begin with doubts about
what God has said and what God has done, and then they go to bitterness.
So, the seed has been planted. She’s
doubting. She’s beginning to be bitter. She’s
beginning to question God. We
don’t know how long that tree has been
there. We don’t know how long this
honeymoon has lasted. She and Adam have
enjoyed this perfect environment. They’ve
had the whole garden to themselves. They’ve
been in perfect fellowship with God. They have had
every pleasure and every joy at their disposal. This
tree has been there and she probably
hasn’t paid much attention to it after Adam had explained her
(after God had formed her) that “this is the tree we’re not to eat
from.” She said, “OK” and she forgot about it. Now
her attention is focused back on this tree.
Now notice the condition of the woman’s soul at this
time. Something is beginning to happen. She has a soul. That’s
her point of contact with her husband. She has a
mentality. Up to now, her mind has been on divine
viewpoint. There is in our minds
self-awareness. We know who we are. Up to now, her
mind has been occupied with Jehovah Elohim. Now her mind has
moved to self. It is expressing itself
particularly as self-pity. In a moment
we shall see that her mind also expresses its preoccupation with self
in pride. So, she is denying
that God is blessing them
and trying to keep them uninformed. Up
to now, all that God has limited them to is doctrine. She
begins to wonder if there isn’t really
some really great knowledge out here that Satan promises her that she
isn’t entering into.
How many young people have grown up within the climate of a
Christian home, and began to pick up the idea that, “All
I’ve had is doctrine,
doctrine, doctrine, and Bible, Bible, Bible, I want to get out there. I
listen to the world and here are all of
these intelligent people.” And
if you send your kid to a state school, you had better take some very
protective action in behalf of that young adult you’re sending off to
school, because that
kid is going to be confronted with brilliant minds, disoriented to
God’s viewpoint, so fouled up as reflected on the national scene today, and
so distorted in their understanding of what life is all about. Your
youngster is going to have a hard time
unless he has plenty of doctrine to buckle that and to put it in the
right perspective.
Obviously, Eve was not sufficiently strengthened in her
response to the Word that she had been taught, that she could resist
these little insipient suggestions of doubt. She
felt that she was being held down, with all of the potential she had. That
was Satan’s original idea—pride.
So, she’s fitting herself, because of God’s injustice. She’s
proud of what she could be. She sees this tree that could give her so
much information. It’s like some young
person who says, “Look at the glamorous world out there that
has so much to offer.” The Jews did the
same thing. God used to be their king. They were his
people. The day came when the nation said, “We want
to be like the other nations. We want a
human king. We don’t just want you, God,
over us.”
There are Christians like that—Christians who have the
wealth of the Garden of Eden in the Word of God. Then
they attend some local assembly. Then somebody throws a doubt in their mind
and they begin sniffing around in other churches, where perhaps there
is something that they have missed. Almost
inevitably they are swung away from a gold mine to a trash heap and to
a desert. The same identical line of
destruction that followed, and Adam with her, is what believers do
today. So, they run around from one church to
another, always thinking that something is better—something
they’re going to miss out on, especially if it’s glamorous. Something
glamorous comes to town, and zap, off they go, because here’s
something very wonderful.
Somebody promises you, “Come to a breakfast.” “How
about coming out to a luncheon we have
for this little group and that little group, and we’ll give
you a great inspiration. You’ll be up with people
who are really moving with God. Oh, you’ll
be so moved.” Pretty soon you’ve cooled
off toward the realities of the Word of God. You go all the
way to the extreme of talking in tongues and running
around pretending that you’re a healer, and any number of
other things. This is a bad thing when you start self-pity
and you start being proud of yourself and you start looking away from
God’s point of blessing into which He has led you, and you’re
wondering if “maybe right over there is something I’m missing. I had better look
into it.” You better be careful. That’s
why you sit here with an old sin nature because our first mother followed that line.
She also has a conscience. This conscience
is on absolute standards. Now she is
rapidly moving away from God’s
standards to human viewpoint standards. She has a will
and it is obviously rapidly going negative toward
God. She has an emotion, and she is now
very excited over the anticipation of what she’s going to
enter into in the way of knowledge and wisdom. This indicates
that she no longer appreciates God. She
feels so deeply about this matter. She
just feels this is so right and so good that it’s going to be
such a benefit to her and her husband. Oh, her husband
is going to be so proud when he comes home. He throws his hat
on the hook after rounding up the animals all day and
figuring out what to name some of those creatures. He
comes home and there’s Eve who’s going to
have a great big surprise for him.
I want you to notice in Genesis 2:17 once more what the
penalty of this eating is when she says, “… lest
ye die” in verse three. Remember
what the penalty was—if they ate of
the tree: “In the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shall surely die.”
Very briefly, we’ll remind you again that literally in the
Hebrew it is, “… dying, thou shalt die.” The word
“surely” is “dying.” It’s
a Hebrew participle, and it means spiritual death. This
is what Romans 6:23 refers to, “… for
the wages of sin is death.” This
is spiritual death. “Die”
is future. This “shalt die” refers to physical
death. That is when the soul leaves the
body. Here are some Scriptures that
indicate that when the body dies, it is the soul leaving the body: Job
27:8, Psalm 16:10, 2 Corinthians 5:8, and
compare with that 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. It is the soul
that leaves the body at the point of death.
Something happened that in the day that they ate they
died. Obviously their souls did not
leave their bodies, for their physical bodies continued to live. Adam
died when he was 930 years old. But the thing
that died instantly was their human spirit. Their point of
fellowship therefore came to an immediate end.
Now this in the Hebrew, grammatically, is an intensive form
connoting the certainty of death that they would face, and the
certainty extending to two realms. Spiritual death was
separation from fellowship with God. Why? Because their contact point
with him was dead. Your contact point is
the human spirit. Adam and Eve spiritually died instantly. The soul,
centuries later, left the bodies.
If you’ll turn to Isaiah 53:9, we have a confirmation of
this two-fold death that took place in the garden and was the two-fold
death for which Jesus Christ died on the cross. For he too died
in two ways. Isaiah 53:9 says, “And he made his grave (speaking of the Lord Jesus)
with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, because he had done no
violence, neither was there any deceit in his death.”
Notice the phrase “and with the rich in his death.” In
your translation, it says, “death”
singular, but the Hebrew again here is plural. Just like it
says, “God breathed into man the breath of lives,”
not just singular live but “the breath of lives.” What lives? Spiritual
life and soul life. Here again Christ
died two deaths upon the cross. The word is
“bemothaw.” It
is deaths, plural. Spiritual death
occurred when the sins of
humanity were poured upon Jesus Christ. He was separated
from God. As Matthew 27:46 says, “He cried out with a loud screaming
voice, ‘My God, My God,
why hast thou forsaken me?” He
was addressing God the Holy Spirit and God the Father. God
the Father and God the Holy Spirit left
Christ on the cross during the three hours from 12:00 noon until 3:00
PM, when darkness descended upon Calvary’s hill. Evidently this
was so that from the eyes of humanity, the humiliation of
the Son of God, the sinless Son of God, bearing the sins of the world,
the darkness would shield His humiliation from the eyes of sinful men
standing around about.
So, from 12:00 noon to 3:00 PM darkness covered that scene as
Jesus Christ experienced spiritual death, and the sins of the world
were poured out on Him. During His time on the
cross, He suffered excruciating physical pain such that no human being
has ever had. The result was that every penalty
for sin was borne by Him in his own body (1 Peter 2:24).
We are born spiritually dead because we have an old sin
nature, and so we’re separated from God. That’s
the principal of Romans 5:12, “By one man (Adam), sin (the
old sin nature) entered, and death (spiritual death) came upon all of
us.”
When His work was finished, Jesus Christ said so. Luke
23:46 says, “… and He died.” It
only took him a few moments to die
physically, but it took quite a while to experience spiritual death on that cross.
If you have a new edition of the Scofield Bible, you might
be interested in noting that it has a note here. It
observes the fact that this word is
mistranslated. The Scofield
notes are usually very very good. This one, I
think, is rather weak. It says,
“In the Hebrew, the word rendered ‘death’ is an intensive
plural. It has been suggested that it speaks of the
violence of Christ’s death, the very pain of which made it
like a repeated death.” That is
spiritualizing the Word,
“… made it like a repeated death.” It
was a repeated death. It was two deaths. It was spiritual and it was physical.
It’s very important that you understand that and get it
clear because it fits Scripture and removes a lot of confusion of what
Christ did upon the cross. You are dead spiritually. God says,
“The wages of sin is death.” How are you going
to die spiritually when you’re already physical dead? No way. Only
Jesus Christ who was born without an old sin nature because He did not have a human father,
was able to die spiritually for you.
So,
in Genesis 3:4, there’s the picture. Here’s
how the old sin nature is now about
ready to come into the human race. In
verse 4, “The serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye
shall not surely die.’” Notice
what he is saying. He is taking the
very words of God, “dying,
thou shalt die,” and he adds a negative. He says,
“… dying, ye shall not die.” That’s
just the way it is in the Hebrew. He adds to the
words of Jehovah Elohim. He says that
spiritual death is not going to result from sin. He’s
playing his characteristic role of a
liar, as we’re told in John 8:44. He
denies the Word of God, and he does it in various ways. Here
with the woman, he’s doing it with an
outright contradiction, saying, “No, that what God says is
not so.”
He will do that with you. Or he distorts
the Word by making it mean something else. He
gives a false interpretation. Or he adds or
subtracts or changes the text. He does that to
the Word. Or one of his favorites is to ridicule and
discount the Word—to discount its value and its authority. Did
you ever have anybody tell you that you’re
learning too much doctrine?
Some time ago we had an evangelistic effort here in the city
(a couple of years ago). My number two
son was involved in it. The leader on
one occasion observed to him as they were driving along in the car to a
meeting in Dallas. That leader suggested that
you can learn too much doctrine, and when you do you get spiritual
indigestion. Now he goes to one of the
biggest churches here in Irving, and he listens to one of the biggest
preachers, and this is what he has learned—to be careful not
to get too much doctrine, or he’s going to get a stomach ache. And my son said
(I’m glad to report), “I don’t think you
get spiritual indigestion from getting too much doctrine. I think
you get it from getting bad doctrine.” That will give
you a stomach ache every time. That’s the truth.
Satan comes along and ridicules doctrine. I
can tell you right now that if there’s anything
he is implanting in your thinking is that it is not important to feed
on the Word of God daily. “How
many years have you gotten along without it? You’re
not too bad, are you? You’ve got as good of
clothes on as anybody else here. When
you walk out into this parking lot, you’ll drive off in as
good of a car as anybody else has here—maybe better. For
your age, you’ve maintained a pretty good appearance in spite
or yourself, better than a lot of people you see here. You’ve
got a good bank account. What do you need to study the Word for? It makes you
think you have to have doctrine every day. You’re
getting along great, aren’t you?”
I’ll remind you again that the devil doesn’t bother with
people who are functioning in a way that is not productive of divine
good. If you want to get trouble in your life, dear
friend, you just start getting phased into God, and you start getting
operational in the world and start producing divine good. He’ll
slap you physically. He’ll slap you financially. He’ll
slap you with family troubles. He’ll slap you on
every side that he can get to you. Only
doctrine and walking in fellowship with God the Holy Spirit will
protect you from those things, if you are functioning in the production of divine
good. So, Satan is going to ridicule. It
isn’t too much doctrine—it’s
applying it more that we need.
In verse 5, Satan proceeds now, after contradicting God, to
malign God. “For God doth know that in
the day that ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall
be as God, knowing good and evil.” The
natural consequences of denying the Word is to malign the author. When
you attack the Bible, which 1 Corinthians
2:16 tells us is the mind of Christ, you are attacking the character of
God. Today Satan maligns Jesus Christ by
saying he’s merely a good man and not deity. Satan, in verse
5, still uses the term for Supreme Being, “Elohim.” He
says that God is jealous of man, when
Satan is really the jealous one, but he’s transferring his
fault to God. People do this too. Satan knew from
his own experience that negative volition didn’t make him like God. It brought
judgment upon him. The earth that he moved into became a chaotic disaster zone. He
wasn’t like God at all. He
couldn’t keep anything running right.
So, Satan promises the woman that she will be like
Elohim. At the end of verse 5, that
should not be “gods,” as you may have it in our
Authorized Version. This is exactly
the same word that you‘ve had
in verse 1, 3, and 5, “Elohim,” the Supreme Being
God. So, it should be “God” again. He
says you’ll be just like God. Now
that’s a great promise—the capacity to
know good and evil in the way that God knows good and evil. How
does God know good? How does God know
evil? Well, God is perfect righteousness, so He
rejects anything that’s contrary to His character. That’s
how He knows sin. He doesn’t know sin by experience. God
produces divine good and He rejects
everything that is not produced by Him, and that’s how He
knows what good is.
Sins were judged at the cross. Your human good,
as a Christian, will be judged as the Judgment Seat of Christ (Romans 14:10), or if
you’re an unbeliever it will be judged at the Great White Throne (Revelation
20:11-12). Both sin and human come from the old sin nature, so God condemns both of them.
Here’s an interesting thing. The more human
good you produce, the more guilt you have. All
of these people running around exuding
because they’re producing human good are producing judgment
for themselves because God is going to judge whatever comes from the old sin nature. The
greater the judgment, the greater the
responsibility, and this suggest perhaps the greater the punishment.
At the point of salvation, you and I were placed into Jesus
Christ, permanently for all of our sins. That’s
positional truth. So, all our sins are paid for. Now what will you
do beyond that? “You shall be as God;
you shall know more.” We already have
everything that God has available for us. We have
everything that relative to good and sin that we need to
know. If you think you’re going to have
to go out to the world to find out how good Christianity is, and what
maybe you’ve been missing, you’re mistaken. Yet,
how many times have you sat in a church service and heard some preacher
stand up and say, “I wonder how many people here will reaffirm your
faith this morning. How many of you will rededicate
yourselves to the Lord?” And some of you
sitting right here have hoofed it down many an aisle rededicating
yourselves. You’ve been called upon to
raise your hand, with several options available, including to love your
mother more. And you’ve walked the aisle for
any number of things.
Some of you have been agonizing in your closet. I
used to think this was the thing to do, when
I was in college my first year. It was a
dormitory and there were six guys in one room. I used to go in
my closet and pray. I walked out one
day when the fellow on the bed next to mine was just
laying down to take a nap. Suddenly the
door flung open and out I came, and he jumped three feet off the bed. He’s
never been the same since. So, this agonizing
in your closet can wreck
people.
You think you’re going to contribute to something. You’re
going to cry at the altar. When I first came to Berean Memorial Church,
we used to have a bench down front with an army blanket over it that my
predecessor called the altar. People used to come down to that altar and weep. The blanket was
salty through and through. You could see it—white all over. It was a big
kick, and people would finish the service and say, “Boy, couldn’t you feel the
spirit moving here.” I was just a dumb
seminary student, and I said, “Well, I felt something moving, but I don’t
know what it was.”
There’s nothing you can do for spirituality or for
salvation. These things are a travesty
against the grace of God. Salvation
is not dependent upon your living a good life. That
comes hard to us. Satan’s
idea is for us to be doctrinal morons
and to get emotional in our thinking. Spirituality is
not built upon emotional campfires. We
have to watch ourselves because we do such
extensive work with young people. It’s
the easiest thing in the world to get around a campfire and hand every
kid a stick, and say, “Throw it on and make a testimony for the
Lord.” Pretty soon everybody’s glowing, but nobody’s
going because they don’t have anything to go with.
How many times have you made stupid vows because some
preacher moved you to get up and make some kind of a vow to God? How
many of you have made public confession
that you should not have made, or you’ve made promises to
God, or you’re begging forgiveness, or you’re pleading the blood, or
you’re mumbling prayers, or you’re deciding for discipleship, or any number of
clichés that have been foisted upon the people of God? If
you’re going to live on that kind of an emotional pitch of Christianity, and think
with your emotions like that, and go for that kind of rot, then you’re
going to have to have a preacher who’s going to have to jack you up
emotionally.
Dr.
Lewis Sperry Chafer used to tell us in the seminary, “Once
you start that line, the dose will have to become bigger and bigger
until you can’t get a hypodermic needle big enough to hold the shot, in
order for you to go on with kind of emotional jag.” This
is a travesty and an insult to the honor of God. You’re
going to have to have some preacher to give you inspirational talks and devotional sermons to keep you cranked
up to living your delusions. You’re going to cycle up
and down in your emotions. You’ll have a
spiritual hangover, with no stability, when you meet the pressures of life.
You’re going to be a prime prospect for the demonic activity
of speaking in tongues and the healing fraud—the whole fraud
of Pentecostalism. We’ll be getting into
this more, but make no mistake that when you are dealing with tongues
and healing, you are dealing with two things: either
demon-indwelt people or demon-influenced people, who can be
Christian or non-Christian. Demon-indwelt
people can only be non-Christians. But
you are dealing with either one, and when
you deal with an organization that deals in tongues and practices
speaking in the gibberish of tongues and practices the fraud of healing, I
don’t care how much good that organization does, it is human good. You
may like the human good, but don’t ever
make the mistake to think that it has the blessing of God or that it
has reward upon it. We have big organizations here
in Dallas that are structured on the background tongues and healing
that draw all kinds of people from all kinds of churches because they appear to
be doing such good for humanity. But what they do
on that background is human good. The same
thing done on the background of the leading of the spirit of God would
be divine good. But when tongues and
healing are involved, you are dealing with demons.
Now
the big churches and the big preachers don’t like this
kind of expose’ talk. I guarantee that
the average professional preacher is in a panic over the idea of not
using emotional manipulation on his congregation. If he responded
(correctly to God), he would have to get into his study
and start cranking out some study. He
would have to start doing the hardest thing on earth to try to come up
with a discussion of the Bible in one service that gave people something
substantial that they could go home and live with, and that their lives could be
transformed by.
Sometimes we have people who complain that we put down other
churches here at Berean. The reason they
complain is because those other churches justify their dishonoring of
the grace of God, and because they go for the emotional pitch. We’re
not putting down churches. We’re
just putting down what is dishonoring
to the grace of God. If you are a
doctrinally-oriented Christian, you’ll be the first to put it
down too.
Let’s look at the victory that Satan has. The
scene is set. The woman has been given doubt. She is now
wondering about the integrity of God, and his justice. She has been
promised great wisdom and great knowledge. In verse 6,
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food.” She saw. She looks at the
tree now with a different mental attitude. She
sees it from Satan’s viewpoint. So
she sees this as good for food. She’s
beginning to think like a materialist,
something more valuable than the will of God. This is a
rationalization to justify sinning. There
was plenty of food in the garden. Any
time we want to sin, we rationalize by
making our specific situation a different and idealistic one.
It was pleasant to the eyes. Her attention was
now focused on the fruit. She was mulling
over the option of sin. The more she
thought of it, the better she
liked the idea. She saw then that
it was a tree to be desired to make one wise, for the purpose of wisdom equal
to God’s. She had fully
accepted the idea about God’s
jealousy and injustice. She said,
“You know that’s right. That tree would
make me like God in my understanding, and He’s trying to keep me
from it. She thought her eating would benefit her and
her husband, so she lost all awareness of the difference between
herself as a creature and God as God.
Now the issue is drawn. God says “Don’t,” but Satan says,
“Do.” What is she going to do? Her mind
has been very cleverly prepared. She is
ready to assume the role of an aggressor in order to improve the
situation of herself and her husband. She takes the
whole future of the whole human race in her hands, upon her shoulders,
instead of leaving it on her husband’s shoulders where it began. So
it culminates in sin. She reaches out. She
plucks the fruit. She bites into it, and her human spirit
dies. Her fellowship with God is gone,
and she is spiritually dead. Into her
soul there comes an old sin nature now to dominate her.
Now her fallen condition is immediately evident. She
sees it. I think the way she must have seen it, as we draw some deductions, some
things that are implied here in Scripture, is that she had a certain
covering. Verse 7 says that they knew that they were naked. This very
statement implies that up to now she didn’t know that she was
naked. As a matter of fact, Genesis 2:25 says, “And
they were both naked (the man and his wife) and they were not
ashamed.” They were not aware that they were
naked. That’s why they were not ashamed. Apparently, they
must have had some kind of covering. They must have
something in the way of clothing up to this point—something that at the
moment she ate she lost. Suddenly she stood there in stark unadulterated nakedness.
We
may deduce that the covering that she had was something in
the form of a light that reflected the glory of God. 1
John 1:5 tells us that God is light. Psalm
104:2 tells us that God clothes Himself
in light. Genesis 1:27 tells us that man
was made in the image of God. That means
that he was made with a personality inwardly like God. Perhaps
we can also deduce that he was mad in
outward appearance of God in reflecting the glory of God, in wearing a
clothing of light that covered him.
1
Timothy 6:16 says that God dwells in light. Romans
13:12 tells Christians to put on the armor of light. It seems from
these Scriptures that we may conclude that she wore some kind of clothing,
some kind of covering, and it was perhaps in the form of light—light
that reflected the glory of God so that their condition was such that they were not
ashamed as they moved about the garden. Now she is
shocked by the consequences of her eating. The man comes
home and right away he sees her as he’s never seen her
before, for now he sees her without her clothing of light. Immediately
he knows what has happened. He knows that she
has violated the restriction of God.
Now he must choose, between Jesus Christ in the garden, and
his wife out of the garden. It seems he
doesn’t hesitate at all. She
is his right woman. The attraction is
so powerful that he goes with her. Satan
doesn’t say a word. He
doesn’t even come
into the picture. He hands the
fruit. The man reaches over, he takes
it, and he eats it. Then the man
loses his covering of light. He receives the
old sin nature, and he dies spiritually.
This is why the man is responsible for the old sin nature,
and for spiritual death. 1 Timothy
2:9-15 deals with women having an inner beauty of the soul. Verse
13 says the man was created first in
order to establish the chain of command or authority in the marriage. God
is man’s head, and the man is the woman’s
head. Verse 14 then says that “Adam was
not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the
transgression.” It points out a
discretion between the sin of
the man and the sin of the woman. The
man knew he was sinning. He knew
doctrine. He understood what had
happened to Eve. He deliberately,
knowingly, sinned. But the woman was
tricked by Satan. She thought that
this would improve her lot with her husband. So, she wanted to
do something that ended up transgressing the will and
Word of God.
They were both sinners, they were both guilty, they both
died spiritually, and they both received an old sin nature. But
his was deliberate and hers was not. Consequently,
we have the observation that
she was deceived, which means planting false ideas into the
mind—anti-God concepts, which doctrine could have protected her from.
Verse 15 says, “Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in
child-bearing.” This means that in spite
of being deceived into sin, she will be saved because she will bear a
child who is a savior. Romans 5:12 tells
us that this old sin nature came through the man, and that it is the man who is
responsible for the old sin nature, and through whom we receive the old
sin nature, by procreation from our fathers. “Wherefore
it was by one man (Adam) sinned, the old sin nature entered
into the world, and death by the old sin nature, so spiritual death
passed upon all men for all have sinned.” It
entered by one man because he deliberately sinned. That’s
why Jesus Christ had to be born without an old sin nature so that
He would be qualified spiritually to die for the sins of the world.
The solution for Adam and Eve for their condition now was
something that only God could provide. But notice what
they did. Genesis 3:7 says, “The eyes of both of them were opened. They
knew that they were naked. (Their covering
of light was gone.) So, they sewed fig
leaves together. This was
legalism—the first human works to
approach God. The word sewed
simply means put together. They probably
wove the stems together, and they made themselves aprons or, specifically, loin
cloths.
Now the solution for their sin was something they should
have gone to God for, but they didn’t. Why
didn’t they go to God and say, “God, look what
we’ve done?” The
reason they couldn’t go to God now was
because they had no way of thinking toward God. Their human
spirits were dead. They had a
mentality in their soul, but their mentality could only
approach using rationalism and human reasoning. You
can’t get to God that way. Or
they could approach using empiricism, and they couldn’t get
to God that way. So, they were completely closed out
from God. So, they made themselves loincloths of fig leaves.
The answer had to be what we have in Genesis 5:6, where
Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. God’s
solution to Adam and Eve was symbolized
by the animals that God killed and substituted in place of their human
good that they had created for themselves. Satan is in
control of humanity now. All the earth is
his. He’s pushing for human good, in keeping with his ambition to be like God. He
was inspiring them to make this
arrangement apart from God because this represented their first step in
getting people related to each other in a life pattern that ignores God.
This is what socialism does. Socialism is the
idea that man can create an environment as perfect as
God once produced. And that men can
relate themselves in such a way, in spite of their old sin nature, that
they will live in peace. And here you have
the first act of socialism right here in the Garden of Eden where the
man and the woman say that they will relate themselves to one another first by
fig leaf loin cloths. And in time, Satan would
promote internationalism which would contribute to his goal of being
the Supreme Being whose will dominates all others.
Here was a tree they were not to eat of. If
they ate of this tree, they would
experience spiritual death first and then physical death. There’s
another tree in the Bible in 1 Peter
2:24 that we invite you to eat of this morning if you are not a
believer. 1 Peter 2:24
tells us concerning this tree of
Jesus Christ who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the
tree, “That
we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes
we were healed.”
You may eat of this tree which is the tree of Calvary, the
cross upon which Christ died. You may
eat of that by faith, by accepting the fact that He died and removed
all the barrier between you and God. Your simple
acceptance and you confidence in your faith to receive Him as your
personal savior means eternal life. All you have
to do is step across the line now represented by the Lord Jesus Christ. If
you do not, you will someday come before
God, and the only thing you’ll have to offer is your human
good, and it comes from your old sin nature, and you’ll be utterly condemned.
Dr.
John E. Danish
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