We have been looking into the early chapters
of the book of Genesis from time to
time in our evening services recently, and I
feel constrained to be turning back there again
tonight.
We are going to look at the Genesis
of Sin, as that is expounded for us
in those first seven verses in Genesis chapter
3, and I therefore ask you to turn
with me again to that passage.
I'm not going to read it now, but
we shall be referring to it as we
proceed.
Perhaps I should clarify the situation.
We are attempting to do one thing only,
namely to let this book of Genesis speak
for itself.
One is very much aware of the various
kinds of criticisms that are leveled at the
Word of God in total, but particularly at
this first book of the Bible, and very
especially at the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
Now, there is a time and place for
a proper consideration of many of these criticisms,
I believe, but that is not in the
pulpit, and certainly not now.
Now, we are taking it that we can
depend upon the integrity of this passage and
of this book, and we are attempting as
best we can to see what God is
saying to us through the words of Genesis.
What's the message?
Many things we shall be leaving aside may
be, but we are attempting to get hold
of the main thrust of the passage, and
I trust that as we do so tonight
we shall have reason to believe that we
ought to thank God for the explanation that
we have here of what has gone on
in our world and of things as they
are tonight.
In order that we should with some measure
of wisdom and understanding address ourselves to rectify
the curse and the disease that is so
rampant among all mankind.
Now, whatever may be literal and whatever, if
any, may be symbolical in the narrative, one
thing is clear as far as the writer
of the book is concerned and as far
as the whole of the Bible is concerned.
Everyone within the covers of the book is
historical as something that actually happened in history
and not something mythical or symbolical in the
absolute sense.
Now, I haven't the time at my disposal
to dwell in any great length at this,
but let me say this much.
The New Testament looks upon this so much
as part of history that it traces the
genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ to Adam.
When you consider that fact, I don't think
one can say anything that is more significant
than that.
Jesus Christ was not a mythical figure.
That we can prove from extra-biblical history.
He was born in a certain place at
a given time, and his name is written
into the annals of the Roman Empire and
not simply into the pages of the New
Testament.
Jesus was a real man.
He was born in time.
He lived and died and rose again in
space and time in our world.
Now, the genealogy of the man Jesus is
traced back by Luke to Adam.
In other words, Luke and the rest of
the writers of the New Testament believed that
Adam was as real as Jesus.
The father is as real as the child.
And it would have been the greatest insult
for them to treat Jesus of Nazareth as
if he were the child of a mythical
figure that lived long ago nowhere.
Not only that, of course, when you turn
to passages like Romans chapter 5, the second
part, 1 Corinthians 15, you will find that
the Apostle Paul treats the life and historicity
of Adam as real as the death and
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He speaks of Jesus as the last Adam
corresponding to the first.
By one man he sent sin into the
world, and death by sin.
But by the last Adam, righteousness came in
in the place of sin and life in
the place of death.
And you have the ministry of the last
Adam, Jesus Christ, corresponding to the need created
by the first.
This is only another way of saying that
the writers of the books of the Bible,
at any rate, look upon this as history
and not as mythical, not as a parable
or anything of that kind, but as something
that has actually happened.
Now, if this is so, if it is
historically accurate, then this record is absolutely vital.
Indeed, it is pivotal to an understanding of
what's going on in the world.
It explains to us, for example, why all
the sciences fail to heal the wound of
mankind, why with all the genius of science
and philosophy and psychology and sociology and every
other science that we have, why with all
the accumulated genius and sophistry of the ages,
we cannot heal the patient man or mankind.
The best that we can do is to
deal with a few pimples on the face
of the patient, but the sickness remains.
Man is writhing in the agony of his
own pain and of his own disease tonight,
and you and I know something of the
heartbreaks that abound on all hands simply because
of what happened here.
Now, if this is a correct understanding of
things, then it explains to us why the
best brains of the world and of the
years and of the ages have not been
able to lift man up, to set him
on his feet again, and to bring peace
and harmony into the world and allow the
world to be run as God originally meant
it.
It is because of what happened here.
Then, of course, on the other hand, if
this is true, and if this is what
God meant the world to be, as it
is described before the fall of man, if
the picture that we have in Genesis describes
the kind of thing that God anticipated, the
kind of thing that God meant, and what
we have before us tonight describes how things
went wrong, then you and I have a
key to an understanding of the need of
the problem of the world.
Though it may sound terribly arrogant to say
it, we have a key that is not
given to the philosophers, that is not given
to the non-Christian scientists, that is not
given to the philosophers, and is not given
to any man apart from the understanding which
is given to us in God's word.
Now, I come then tonight to a passage
which is very, very important.
It takes us to the heart of the
matter which is perhaps the most important of
all important matters as we study the history
of mankind.
What's gone wrong?
Why is the world in the mess it
is?
Why is it that we simply cannot bring
peace to the nations?
Why is it that we cannot have righteousness
reigning?
Well now, this passage before us tonight tells
us that an alien power has captivated the
heart and the mind and the will of
our first parents, leading them away and astray
from God and into a total rebellion against
Him.
And that, in brief, is the message that
I bring you tonight.
The explanation of the state and the condition
of mankind, according to this book of Genesis,
is this.
Man is in rebellion.
The first two, the first couple that God
made, rebel.
And all their children and all their progeny
have been born in rebellion, have accepted the
status quo, and have added to it, and
have personally joined in the rebellion so that
the whole family of mankind constitutes a kingdom
of darkness set over against the kingdom of
light, a kingdom of Satan set over against
the kingdom of God.
This is why things can't be easily rectified,
because of the basic rebellion in the hearts
of our parents, handed down to us, and
which we have accepted for ourselves.
But now let's look at it, and let's
see how it is developed here in the
passage.
There are three main things that emerge here.
First of all, we see Satan preparing the
way for his sinister attack upon our first
parent.
Satan preparing the way.
Secondly, we see Satan propagating a lie.
And thirdly, we see Satan procuring an ally.
And if that helps us to remember, to
summarize the passage, then so may it be.
Satan preparing the way, Satan propagating a lie,
and thirdly, Satan procuring an ally.
Now let's look at the picture.
Satan prepares the way for his pending assault.
Now that's what we have in verses one
to three.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any
beast of the field which the Lord God
had made.
He said unto the woman, Yea, hath God
said, Ye shall not eat of every tree
of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We
may eat of the fruit of the trees
of the garden, but of the fruit of
the tree which is in the midst of
the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not
eat of it, neither shall ye touch it,
lest ye die.
Satan prepares the way.
Now the first thing we must do, of
course, is to identify the serpent as Satan.
You notice the name Satan doesn't come in
there, but I've spoken of the serpent as
Satan.
Why do we do that?
The word for serpent means the shining one.
There must have been something about this serpent
which was very significant.
Earlier on in chapter two you remember that
God brought all the creatures of the field,
all the creatures that had been made, he
brought them to Adam that Adam should name
them.
Adam did that.
But now here is something quite unusual.
Here is a serpent who is capable of
speech.
Here is a serpent who is capable of
communicating.
This is something out of the ordinary.
You don't meet in chapter two.
This is something altogether out of the ordinary.
Now, when we come to the New Testament,
we find that the apostle Paul speaks of
Satan as one who makes himself into an
angel of light, an angel of light.
And strange to say, in 2 Corinthians chapter
11, he refers to that in a context
where he also refers to Eve's being beguiled
by Satan.
Now I ask the question, and I cannot
dogmatize about it, does that mean to say
that the apostle Paul is thinking of Satan
as being transformed into an angel of light,
not only in New Testament times, but also
back in the Garden of Eden, when he
came as the shining one and somehow or
other masqueraded as more than a creature, and
yet in the guise of the creature?
Now whatever about that, by the time we
come into the New Testament, we find that
it is made very explicit that the serpent
was Satan.
And when you come to the end of
the New Testament, to the book of the
Revelation, we have no qualms, no questions to
ask at all, because our questions are answered.
Let me read to you.
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his
angels fighting against the dragon.
And the great dragon was thrown down, yet
that ancient serpent who is called the devil
and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.
You have the same.
That was Revelation 12, verses 7 and 9,
but you have the same kind of thing
in Revelation 20, in verse 2.
And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent
who is the devil and Satan, and bound
him a thousand years.
In other words, the serpent is Satan, and
Satan is the serpent.
I don't think there is need to pursue
that.
But now, agreeing that we are right here
in our designation of the serpent as Satan,
I want you to notice next the intrusion
of Satan into the affairs of God and
his human creatures.
Satan is always a busybody.
It is no wonder that the Apostle Paul
and other writers in the New Testament were
so angered by busybody.
I hope you have noticed that in the
New Testament.
And one reason, I believe, is this, that
Satan is such a busybody, he gets into
everybody's business.
Satan is essentially an intruder.
Always has been, and he certainly is here.
Interfering into things that don't belong to him.
But here he comes.
You notice how he comes.
He comes and he addresses not Adam, but
Eve.
Not both of them together, but one of
them.
And that was the woman who had been
given to be a helper fit for the
man.
He said to the woman, Did God say,
You shall not eat of any tree of
the garden?
Now that's the correct translation.
Did God say, You shall not eat of
any of the trees of the garden?
Satan comes to the woman with a suggestion.
A suggestion allied to an exaggeration.
You notice what he's after.
He wants to engage this woman's conversation, and
he's got something big to do in a
moment.
But of course, he doesn't want to do
it all at once.
He's got to prepare the way.
And so the first thing to do is
to get the woman's attention.
It's to get her ears.
It's to get her listening.
And he's very brilliant at this kind of
thing.
An incredulous tone, so grammarians tell us, is
very obvious here.
Did God say, You can't eat of any
of the trees of the garden?
And such an exaggeration.
We all know how a wholly baseless suggestion
can be employed to startle someone.
It gets your attention all right, but it
gets you off balance.
It may sound daring, even offensive to the
ear.
But here, he certainly gained the attention of
the woman, and then he brought in his
exaggeration.
And of course, in just a few moments,
poor Eve doesn't know what she's thinking about,
nor what she's talking about.
Because he has said something which was wrong,
and yet she's finding herself instinctively getting into
conversation with this strange, sinister, shining being, serpent
-like, who's addressing her.
The end result at that stage was that
Satan had secured a foot inside the door
of Eve's mind, and got her into a
debate on his own terms, and not on
hers.
The dialogue is on.
Now notice the difference.
When Satan approached Jesus in the wilderness, he
didn't start to enter into a dialogue with
him.
I find this very significant.
It's not cowardice to turn your back on
Satan.
Eve began the dialogue, she listened, and she
went on to correct him, and to talk
to him, and treat him as if he
were reasonable.
Satan is not reasonable.
Satan is not sensible.
Satan is not one to argue with.
How many of us, if we were honest
tonight, and if the opportunity were given for
us to talk freely and frankly with one
another, would have to say, we fell, and
he got us into a net, simply because
we started to argue with him.
Jesus said, get thee behind me, Satan.
No arguing here.
Even the Son of God doesn't argue with
Satan.
His apostles tell us, resist the devil, and
he will flee from you, but never argue
with him.
Don't enter into dialogue with a being of
disorder, because he's too great, and he's too
big, and he's too cunning for you and
for me, apart from the grace of God.
He never announces the purpose or intention of
his intrusions, but he comes and tries to
engage us in conversation, Satan preparing the way.
Oh, that God would give us a spiritual
radar system.
You know, I was laughing up my sleeve
the other day.
I don't know whether I should or not.
Any police officers here, perhaps I shouldn't say
this, but when I heard of that gadget
they have in the cars to detect those
who pull you up for speeding, you know,
I was laughing a little.
Perhaps I was very naughty.
Well, forgive me if I was, but oh,
that we should have some such spiritual gadget
in our souls, a radar system, that we
should be able to see our enemy astride
our pathway.
Oh, for a sensitivity of spirit.
This is why, you see, it is so
necessary for Christian men and women to be
filled with the Spirit of God, and armed
with the Word of God.
A Christian man or a Christian woman who
is but a lackadaisical, distant follower of Jesus
Christ, is always prey to Satan.
You and I need to be filled with
the Spirit, and under the power and dominion
of the Word of God, and not just
following afar off as Peter was.
That's a dangerous thing to do.
Keep close, just as the Lord Jesus makes
sure that the dove of the Spirit abides
on you.
I was reading that this week.
I'm making digressions tonight.
This is a very dangerous thing to do,
but you know, let's pass it on when
it's fresh.
John the Baptist knew the Lord Jesus to
be the Messiah, not just because the dove
came upon him, but because the dove abode
on him, abode on him.
My friend, is the Spirit of God abiding
on you?
Is he on you tonight with his peace
and his glow and his grace?
Abode upon him.
Led him into the wilderness, brought him out
of the wilderness, led him to the cross,
into the grave, out of the grave, into
heaven.
Abode on him.
That's the message.
You and I dare not live with anything
less than that in a world where there
is such a sinister, malign being as the
one we encounter here.
And if we're only praying, tying with Christian
things, then we shall certainly betray, and we
shall most miserably fall.
Satan preparing his way.
The second thing, Satan propagating a lie.
Now, sooner or later, Satan brings out his
trump card, which is invariably a lie, but
a lie usually that is so near the
truth that you sometimes miss it.
A lie that is so much like the
truth that if you're not in the Spirit
and if you're not educated in the Word,
you don't see it.
What has preceded, then, was but the initial
skirmishing that prepared the way for the greater
assault, was the psychological softening up process, getting
your foot in the door to be a
salesman.
Eve countered Satan's first words, you remember, bless
her, I like this, and we ought to
remember this.
You know, I've never heard anyone refer to
this, but here it is in the Scriptures.
First of all, Eve came to the defense
of her God.
Satan said, did God say you can't eat
of any of the trees, the fruit of
any of the trees of the garden?
Oh, no, no, says Eve.
When she got her composure, she said, God
didn't say that.
God said we could eat of the fruit
of all the trees of the garden except
one.
She corrected him.
We may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden, but God said you
shall not eat of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the
garden, neither shall you touch it lest you
die.
Having engaged her mind and imagination, he now
delivers the heavy ammunition.
What he says, even though he veils it
up, of course, is this.
What he says is God is a liar.
He didn't use those words.
He never does.
You must be careful how Satan clothes his
words and clothes his ideas.
He always covers the pill very well with
nice, lovely, sweet, sweet something.
He didn't say God is a liar, but
that's what he's really saying.
That's what he meant.
Because he goes on to say this, you
shall not die, Eve said.
God says don't eat of the fruit of
the tree which is in the midst of
the garden, nor touch it lest you die.
No, says Satan, you shall not die.
For, now notice, for God knows that when
you eat of it, your eyes will be
opened and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.
Now, one word of explanation there, a very
hurried one.
In some of your translations it will say
you shall be like gods.
In other translations it says you will be
like God.
Now, the word for God, Elohim, is a
plural one, and therefore no one can dogmatize
as to whether the reference is to gods
or to God, but probably this is right
if the reference is to God, the God
of the Bible, the God that we encounter
here, Elohim.
There's no talk in Genesis at this point
about other gods.
No other gods are recognized in the beginning.
God, Elohim, and therefore it is more than
probable that what we have here is this.
Satan says you can eat and you're not
going to die, and the reason why God
told you not to eat is this.
When you do, you will have such a
knowledge of good and evil that you will
be like God himself.
What a date!
Now, can I just underline two things here,
two principles, and I think that they will
apply as much tonight in Knox Church and
out in the world, out in Toronto and
in our country and in the world as
they applied right here in the Garden of
Eden of old.
Two things that Satan did.
First of all, Satan shocked Eve's innocent faith
in the goodness of God.
He shocked her innocent faith in the goodness
of God.
The cynicism involved in his opening insinuation and
the dogmatism of his next statement so shocked
Eve that she never really gained composure after
this.
It's a tremendous statement.
He shocks her.
You see, Eve in her natural, native, unspoiled,
innocent condition had a predisposition to believe that
God was good.
After all, God had made her, spoken to
her and her husband, and put her and
her husband in this lovely setup in the
Garden of Eden, in such a lovely world.
There was its beauty, there was its fertility,
there was the joy and peace and tranquility
of it and much else.
It was God who put her there, and
God had given her everything she had, and
she knew that.
So that she was predisposed to have faith
in the goodness of God.
And until this character came along, she believed
that there was some reason why she should
not eat of that one tree in the
center of the garden.
She believed that God had a good reason
for telling them not to.
But you see, what Satan does, he shocks
that innocent faith.
I say innocent faith because it's not been
tried yet.
He shocks it.
And Satan loves to use his shock tactic.
You sure you can trust him?
You notice what he said?
God's got something up his sleeve.
As a matter of fact, God knows, you
see, that if you took the fruit of
that tree, you'd be like himself.
And he doesn't want you to be that.
In other words, God wants to keep you
down.
Right down there.
And he doesn't want you to become such
a being that you are no good and
evil as he does.
He wants to keep you down.
He wants to keep you under.
Now, I on the other hand, I have
your very best in mind.
And so I suggest to you that you
take no notice at all of what your
God has told you.
You don't.
And when you do, you'll be like God
himself.
You got it?
He shocks her innocent faith in the goodness
of God.
How many of us in our younger days
have gone through this precisely?
We had a kind of innocent faith in
God, perhaps.
We'd been taught that God was loyal.
We'd been taught that God would hear prayer.
We'd been taught that God was good.
And then the sinister notion came.
Why do you obey the commandments?
Why do you live a decent life?
Why do you do this and why do
you not do that?
Surely it's not good for you.
Why not let go?
And you'd be so much the better for
it.
Look what you get.
You and I know what a spoiling of
the life can take place when we believe
the devil's lie and allow him to shock
our innocent faith in the goodness of God.
In the goodness of God, even when he
prohibits something.
The second thing I want you to notice
is this.
Satan shames her uncritical fear of God's righteousness.
He shocks her innocent faith in God's goodness.
He shames her uncritical fear of God's righteousness.
In her state of innocence, Eve instinctively believed
that when God said that eating of the
forbidden fruit would result in death, such a
sentence was reasonable, and such a sentence would
take place if she ate.
She believed that.
It was an innocent belief in the righteousness
and rectitude of God.
She believed in the moral justifiability of this
statement and of this curse.
Now, she didn't use that kind of language,
of course, but this is exactly what she
believed.
She was predisposed to believe that God would
put her in such a setting, and so
she feared.
Now, there's a difference between fear and fear.
There is a kind of fear which is
a very healthy one.
It's the kind of fear that a driver
of a car has, and he keeps on
the proper side of the road rather than
on the other side of the road.
I wish some people had a little more
of that fear.
I've met one or two today who could
have done with an extra dose.
There is a fear that is necessary for
proper living in society, and Eve had something
of that.
This respect for God, for His justice and
His righteousness.
There's something wrong in taking of the fruit
of that tree, and he tells me we
shall die.
Therefore, I won't, until Satan came along.
He shamed this kind of belief in the
righteousness of God.
There's no reason why you should die.
There's no reason why this kind of thing
should be at all.
You shall not die.
In other words, you notice, he takes away
the fear of God's righteousness.
What he's saying is this.
There will be no consequences at all to
what you do.
God has said that it is wrong.
God has said that you will die for
it, but really there's no reason for that.
There's no rectitude, no moral necessity, and you
won't actually die.
So you don't need to fear that.
He took away the fear as he had
earlier taken away the faith.
You know, the devil does exactly the same
thing today.
This is his second main shaft.
First of all, he takes away your innocent
faith in God.
Then he takes away your fear of God,
which is respect, and which is something that
common grace gives to so many people.
A respect for the righteousness of God, that
he has a reason for what he says,
that when he threatens, he means it.
We forget, you see, and Satan wanted to
blur the fact that there is a sense
in which we cannot be like God.
And all, or rather, many of our faiths,
so-called, many of the religions that are
being hawked around today, many of the faiths,
they have no concept of the transcendence of
God.
You and I cannot know good and evil
as God knows evil.
You cannot be like God in his transcendence.
He's the God of glory.
He's the creator.
We are but the creatures.
There is a sense in which we cannot
ever be like God.
There is another sense in which we may.
You see, the devil minimizes the greatness of
God, the transcendence of God, and he holds
this carrot before the woman and says, you
shall be like God, knowing good and evil.
Won't that be wonderful?
What a revelation, what a translation, and what
an elevation.
Oh, beware of those influences that would attack
a predisposition to faith in God, or would
shame an innate fear in him, because when
these defenses are down, you are an open
prey to Satan.
Or something happens then.
It's exactly the same thing that's happened with
Eve.
There comes about a bewitching influence.
Now, I would like to talk about this
at great length, but I'm not going to
do it.
It's this bewitching influence of Satan.
Let me put it in a nutshell, what
I mean.
Sin looks so attractive, and wrong seems so
absolutely right when I'm under the spell of
his temptation.
When he's got rid of my earlier confidence
in God, and he's got rid of my
fear of God, he's got rid of these
two things, now he brings his bewitching influence
upon me.
And somehow or other, you know, the thing
that I said I would never do, I
think it's so right, and it's so necessary.
I must do it now.
I'm under his bewitching influence.
There's a compulsion upon me.
It's attractive.
It's so wonderful.
Why didn't I think of it before?
I can't live without it anymore.
I must have it, and I must have
it now.
And in the realm of sex and moral
things very especially, this is exactly what the
devil says.
Why should you wait?
Why should you keep this thing until you're
involved in wedded love?
Have it now.
It's right.
It's for you.
And under his bewitching influence, you say, of
course it's right.
What on earth made me think it was
wrong?
But you see, what is bewitching before you
do it looks so very different after you've
done it.
There are two characters in the Old Testament,
and they commit this sin together.
It's a sexual sin.
A sexual sin.
And then we read this remarkable statement afterwards.
This man is said to have loved this
girl, but after the sin, we read this.
He loved her, but the hatred wherewith he
now hated her was greater than the love
wherewith he first loved her.
What happened?
That thing has turned sour.
The glory and the glow and the attraction
of it is all gone.
And it looks so tawdry, so miserable, so
awful, so wretched.
He hates the sight of the girl that
he committed the sin with.
She was so attractive before.
That's just it.
When he gets rid of your innate faith
or confidence in God, and he gets rid
of your fear of his righteousness, then he
comes with this bewitching influence, and you look
at the forbidden thing, and you're out of
your wits.
This is why Jesus did not die along
with Satan.
Satan prepares the way.
Satan propagates his lies.
Satan procures an ally.
So when the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and that it was
a delight to the eyes, and that the
tree was to be desired to make one
wise, she took of its fruit and she
ate.
And she also gave some to her husband
and he ate.
Then the eyes of them both were opened,
and they knew that they were naked.
And they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves apron.
The passage describes the mighty fall, first of
the woman and then of the man.
She who was given as a helper meat
for Adam is now the one that leads
him into the disaster.
Two things I want you to notice here,
two main things.
The confident defiance of God's commandment.
This is a continuation of what we were
saying just a moment ago.
But it brings us into the arena of
the action itself.
Robbed of her innocent, untried faith in God,
and of her instinctive fear of Him, Eve
takes another long look at the forbidden tree.
And she looks at it, and do you
notice what happens now?
There's this enchantment upon her.
My, it's so beautiful.
And the fruit of the tree is so
precious, so tasty, it would seem.
I don't know how she could say that.
But she looked at it, and it was
to be desired also to make one wise.
It had this appeal to the taste, to
the eye, and it somehow promised such wisdom
that would elevate her to the very place
of God.
In one mad moment she put out her
hand and she took the fruit of the
forbidden tree.
That was it.
The confident defiance of God's commandment.
She had hesitated before, because she had some
confidence in the goodness of God.
She had hesitated before, because she had some
confidence in the righteousness and rectitude of God
when He threatened it.
But now with all these gone, she puts
out her hand and she partakes of the
forbidden fruit.
Scripture tells us nothing about the exact taste
of that fruit, whether it was insipid or
juicy or satisfying.
I don't know anything about that.
All that's unimportant.
But what is important is that our first
parents had exiled themselves from God.
As they partook of that forbidden tree, they
set themselves over against the will of God
and stood up against Him and opened up
a chasm that will forever stand dividing heaven
from hell.
That's what the book says.
Nothing less than a Calvary and a risen
Lord Jesus Christ with the wounds in His
hands and form a bridge from the one
side of the gulf to the other.
And there is no other way from the
kingdom of lostness and of darkness into the
kingdom of salvation and of light.
Only one.
And so we come to the cruel foretaste
of disillusionment.
She's taken the fruit.
Adam is likewise.
But two of them have taste of it.
What then?
Listen to what this says.
Then the eyes of them both were opened,
and they knew that they were naked.
But they didn't ask for this.
They had been told that they would know
good and evil, but they didn't.
They didn't bargain for this.
Know good and evil, be as God.
Well, they've got some knowledge of good and
evil.
That's why they put these fig leaves on.
But this is not the kind of knowledge
they asked for.
No, no.
This is not what they thought they were
going to have.
But you see, the devil never keeps the
stuff in the window.
And he's never honest, and he's never upright.
God is.
The devil puts the wrong tags on things.
God never does.
God calls a slave a slave.
That foreglim that we have there, in which
God, through the writer of Genesis, proceeds to
tell us what happened.
That foreglim is only a foreglim.
Because in the rest of the chapter we
shall read, and we shall discover much else
when we get to it.
But first of all, will you notice what
happened here?
They now possessed a knowledge which was painful
to endure.
Not a knowledge such as God has of
good and evil, but a knowledge that made
them aware of themselves, and ashamed to be
in one another's company.
They'd never had this before.
I don't know what length of time the
first two chapters of Genesis cover.
I can't tell you.
Nobody can tell you.
But however long Adam and Eve had lived
together, they were able to live together in
nakedness and were unaware of it.
There was no sense of shame.
They were in the bodies that God had
given them, in God's beautiful world.
And all was sweet and dignified and meaningful.
But suddenly from somewhere comes a sense of
shame.
The serpent's promise of eyes opened came true
in its fashion.
But it was a grotesque anticlimax of the
dreams of enlightenment.
Man saw the familiar world and spoilt it
now in the seeing.
And evil was in his eye as in
the eye of his partner.
His new consciousness of good and evil was
both like and unlike the divine knowledge, differing
from it and from innocence.
As a sick man's aching awareness of his
body differs from the insight of a physician
or the unconcern of a man in good
health, Adam and Eve felt sick within.
And sick they were.
They possessed a knowledge which they wished they
did not have.
Not an objective knowledge such as the physician
has of the patient, but a knowledge of
the patient himself who has all the symptoms
of a new disease, and he dreads it.
That's the knowledge given to them.
A shame in the soul.
And the last thing is this.
They possessed a knowledge which was painful to
endure, and they pined with a need that
they were unable to fulfill.
What are they going to do?
You know, there is something laughable about this.
I don't know what your emotions are or
what you think when you read this.
I wish we could find out.
But I'm afraid I smile a little.
I see these two sewing fig leaves together
to hide their nakedness.
There's something so pathetic about it, and yet
something so tragic.
Where does it all come from?
It all comes from this.
They try to be like God, and they
disobey His commandment, and they make fools of
themselves.
Sin always leads you that way.
The instinct was sound, of course.
Shame is the first fruit of guilt.
And they try to cover themselves by this
means.
But it did not avail.
And we read later on, as we shall
see, that with their aprons of leaves on,
they still had to hide behind the trees
of the garden when they heard that God
was coming.
Oh, those aprons are not going to hide
anyone.
You need something more than that to deal
with your shame.
You need the blood of Jesus Christ to
wash your sin away.
And you need the righteousness of Christ imputed
to you.
And this is the only answer.
Now I'm through one or two things very
briefly as we close.
I can hear someone say, well, that's what
it says.
That's what Genesis, that's what that passage says.
It speaks of the intrusion of Satan into
the world of God and the upsetting of
the world by this malign, sinister power who
is stronger and wiser than man, and yet
subject to God.
But a question that remains is this.
Why should God allow a thing like this?
Haven't you met it?
Haven't you asked it?
Haven't we all at some point or other
asked the question, why should God allow this
kind of thing?
If He's sovereign over His world, if He
made it, and if He rules over it,
why should He allow it?
I want to give the answer in a
nutshell, without enlarging.
But I think it's so important.
You see, something of this order had to
happen, because God made man for Himself.
God made man to have fellowship with Him.
Now, there were only two ways in which
this could have been done.
Either God made man an automaton, in which
case, well, he would have been programmed to
do the right thing, say the right word,
and there would have been no virtue to
it.
A kind of a puppet, moving at the
movement of a finger.
Or, God makes man a free being, with
the capacity to offer His love freely to
Him, to obey Him willingly, to worship Him
gladly, but with the possibility at the same
time of not doing so.
Of listening to a sinister intruder, a serpent
who was Satan.
And because the kind and quality of fellowship
with man that God is after is that
of the free offering of the heart and
of the will and of the life to
Himself, this is why temptation is allowed.
But God allowed it because He wanted the
heart of man given Him spontaneously and gladly
and freely.
And man, well, because of that all, our
world is divided now into two categories.
And all of us are born into the
one class.
Our first parents were in rebellion against God.
They belonged to a kingdom of their own,
the Adamic kingdom, the kingdom of darkness, the
kingdom of Satan.
And all of us are born into that.
That stands over against the kingdom of God
and of His dear Son, the kingdom of
light and the kingdom of life.
And this is the sinister, devastating thing that
happened here in Eden.
You know, you could weep sometimes when you
hear some sometimes well-trained ministers of the
gospel talking about this incident, almost as if
they were talking about two little boys breaking
into a garden to steal some apples.
They've never seen the truth that lies behind
it.
But truth is this.
It's not the stealing of a paltry bit
of an apple or any fruit like that.
It's man rebelling against God, setting up his
kingdom, dividing the world and involving his progeny
for future generations.
That's what we have here.
That's why it's so serious.
This is the explanation that the Bible gives
us of the great division of the world
tonight and of the need of mankind.
It's the need of a Savior who will
deal with that basic rebellion in the human
heart, who will wipe out the guilt of
man, who will build up His own kingdom
of righteousness and of goodness and of peace
and of grace that will outlive every other.
And our Lord Jesus Christ is the Savior
who does that.
Is He yours?
Has He brought your rebellious heart to a
place of penitence?
A story.
Two outstanding leaders in the history of Europe
line through with us.
And in a great skirmish which has gone
down in history, these two great leaders representing
two great nations meet.
And the vanquished is going now to this
representative of the victorious country.
And he's going up to the representative with
his hand out to shake his hand.
The representative of the victorious country says, Stop,
he said.
Before you give me your hand, give me
your sword.
Your sword first.
Then your hand.
There are many people who want the hand
of God before they surrender their sword of
rebellion.
You surrendered your sword of rebellion.
You repented of your sin.
Ask for grace to do it tonight because
the hand of God is open and stretched
out to those who will turn from their
sin and rebellion and come to Him in
His Son.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we not only pray that Thou
will give us the right understanding of things
in accordance with Thy work, but a right
experience of the saving grace which came in
Jesus Christ Thy Son.
Deal with our native rebellion of soul, our
setting up of our wills against Thine, our
entering into forbidden territories and under the influence
of Satan, under his enchantments, and so much
that was evil.
Ignorantly, perhaps in some measure, but nevertheless for
which we are responsible.
O Lord, we ask of Thee to forgive
us, to give us to know the Savior
and the sanity that He needs that He
may live and not die.
We ask it in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.