Dennis Tuuri

Genesis 3:1-41. Then now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” And the woman said to 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 has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” And to the woman, he said, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” And then to Adam he said, “Because you have heard the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it.’

Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. And then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we do pray that your spirit now would take this word and illumine it to our understanding. Help us, Father, to have open ears. Help us to come to this text not with presuppositions or sinful aversions to things we don’t like in it, but help us, Father, to deal with it honestly, correctly according to your spirit.

Lord God, we need you in all things and certainly here to understand your word and this very important part of your word which teaches us how we got to be the way we are. Father, we ask and implore you to send your spirit. Guide my tongue, Father. And may we all hear from your word the transforming power of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land. Plumes of smoke rise and merge into the lean sky. A man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers. But he wakes to a morning with no reason for waking. He’s haunted by the memory of a lost paradise in his youth or a dream. He can’t be precise. He’s chained forever to a world that’s departed. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. His blood is frozen and curdled with fright. His knees have trembled and given way in the night.

His hand is weakened at the moment of truth. His step is faltered. One world, one soul. Time passes, the river rolls, and he talks to the river of lost love and dedication. And silent replies that swirl invitation flow dark and troubled to an oily sea, a grim intimation of what is to be. There’s an unceasing wind that blows through this night. There’s dust in my eyes that blinds my sight, and a silence that speaks so much louder than words.

The promise is broken.

These words from a modern-day poet I use to get us to think through things a little bit. I can’t do justice to this song. It’s the music that is used in this particular poetry that brings home the significance of what the poet is trying to get across. Now, I’m not trying to tell you that this poet is elect. I don’t think he is. I think he means to speak of these words of the glooming and coming ecological disaster that so many people look to in our day and age.

The oily river as an example of that. He actually, however, has done a little bit of research. The opening phrase, “sweet smell of a great sorrow,” which I shall repeat through this sermon, is actually taken from Steinbeck’s work Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck wrote in the Grapes of Wrath something not this kind of poetry but a narrative that spoke of an ecological disaster, albeit brought on by God. The dust bowl that in the early twentieth century of our country and the incredible consequences for that—the blinding wind and the dust blowing.

But I think that behind ecological disasters, whether man-made or God-made, we can see in these words and in our own experience of the disasters we bring into our lives the consequence of what we’ve read of in Genesis chapter 3. When I listen to this poetry these days, or when I think about it, I think of the morning after. I think of Adam and the whirling dust that he’s been thrust into, the movement of his life.

We read Genesis 2 and 3 and there are incredibly significant, potent words and concepts throughout it. Two weeks ago when we began this series I talked about them a little bit. The words are not normal words quite frequently. You remember I talked about that. There’s temple and tabernacle imagery throughout this text and you begin to study what this text is in the original language and you begin to realize why some men fall prey to the sinful temptation to not treat this as historic narrative, as literal description of the creation of the world in six days, because it’s so meaningful.

It’s so packed in the terminology that’s used and so significant in the incredible broad brush strokes that are painted that are so true to our human experience. It just is so much more than just a simple historical narrative. But it is that. And Adam and Eve were real people like you and me. Well, not quite like you and me until the end of chapter 3. Real people. And they had moved by the end of chapter 3 from this wonderful garden paradise, the presence of God.

God is life. And God’s presence is pictured in his garden, his paradise, his Eden. And that life flows out in chapter 2 that we read a couple weeks ago, filled with these images of water, gold, gemstones, beautiful plants, food that you can just pluck off the trees and eat. Now, there was work to be done, but don’t underestimate the significance of the beauty of this garden. And by the next morning, Adam woke up to a whole new world, didn’t he?

He had been thrust out of all of that. Not just taken out, drove out is what the text says. He’s excommunicated. Think of it that way. Shoved out there. And this cherubim was stationed with sword, fire, turning every way. Three-fold repetition. He ain’t coming back in through his works. Forget it. His life has changed forever. Now he’s got the memory. It’s the next day. Imagine it the next morning. And think of what has happened in Adam’s life, not to speak of the life of the whole human race.

Very significant stuff that’s portrayed for us here. And at the heart of this, as we see in chapter 3, is a relationship with his wife.

Now, you know, kids, the first children, they don’t experience garden life, unless you could call Adam and Eve kids. In a way, they were kind of innocent. But in chapter 4, where it says that they knew each other—or Adam knew his wife—and she conceived and had a son. The first family in terms of father, mother, and child, husband, wife, child, that happens in the outside of the garden, out there in the brambles where that whirling wind and the dust is blowing.

That’s where all that family stuff starts to happen, not in the garden. Tremendous significance for relationships, horizontal and vertical. And we’re talking about marriage. This is originally intended to be several talks preparing us for camp. It is that. But this will go on for some time.

And the providence of God, I had my last two weeks were completely different than I planned them. The week before this last week was supposed to be a relatively easy week. I didn’t have to prepare a new sermon. I was going up to Seattle to preach, but things happened. So it became very, very busy. Lots of stuff to do. Lots of stuff to do at the Seattle church. Went up there last weekend. Had a great time. Not, you know, just I’m not talking about fun. I’m talking about very productive time, I think, for kingdom work. Praise God for that. And I bring you greetings from all those folks, so it was quite a different week than I had planned.

And this last week was supposed to be very busy for me. Number of meetings, whole bunch of meetings and stuff going on. And the providence of God, what we brought back from Seattle, in addition to a real satisfaction that God was doing work up there, that we were part of that work, what we also brought back was a flu bug. On the way home from Seattle, driving back, my youngest daughter threw up at McDonald’s and that began the whole saga for the rest of the week for us.

What was a real busy work turned into a very laid-back week as we sat around with moaning stomachs and stomach flu and other kind of bugs going on. My five children aren’t here today both for their sake and yours. I’m praying that God will not bring this into this church. They’ve struggled with this stomach flu in Seattle for a couple months, I guess, or not if not more. Anyway, so as a result of that, what I mostly did this week was continue to read this text, commentaries, and meditate on what I wanted to do with this text and this series.

And what I’ve decided is that there are a number of sermons I want to preach based on Genesis 2 and 3. So what we’re going to do today is do an overview of chapter 3 and give you little trailers. You know, like movie previews. It’s like you go to the movies. I like those previews. You know, I like to get there early enough to the movie theater to watch the previews. I don’t mind those ads at the beginning of videotapes these days.

I like previews. Well, that’s what I’m going to give you today is a lot of previews and maybe the Lord God will take some of those things and minister grace in those particular areas. But understand, I’m going to go back over them slowly in the next few months. Now, dozens of sermons there out of these texts. And I want to go through those things slowly. But today I want to give you the overview and then make this single point of application to man at the end of the sermon.

Now, remember all this is to the end that we might see the relationship between marriage and then the reconstruction and reformation that this church is dedicated to proclaiming—the crown rights of Christ in every area. Remember, we quoted from that book two weeks ago, and I want to read a quote here again from that book about reformation. The Reformation and how it really was very significant in the reversals it brought for the Christian family and particularly the husband-wife relationship. Let me read a quote from that book now at the beginning of this sermon as well.

“The profound social significance that Protestants attached to marriage was illustrated by the marriage services of newly formed Wittenberg in 1524 and Nuremberg in 1526. Both of which elaborated the second chapter of Genesis.”

The new service in Wittenberg. So these are now Protestant, reformed. The reformation of the marriage service itself is what we’re talking about here from this book, “When Fathers Ruled.”

“The new service in Wittenberg stressed that marriage was quote ‘a far different thing than what the world presently jokes about and insults.’”

We would say the same in our day, wouldn’t we? Remember two weeks ago, Henny Youngman and the church fathers sometimes found themselves in similar veins, making fun of wives and degrading the marriage institution itself.

“On the one hand, it is the end of a man’s loneliness and he and his bride become one thing like a cake.”

That was in this service—one thing like a cake. I don’t know why they chose cake, but maybe to show the unity that happens as a result of marriage in the context of a festive thing that you would eat. Anyway, they become one thing like a cake, it says.

“And on the other, it’s a perennial institution in which the wife freely accepts the pain of childbirth and subjection to her husband and the husband the pain of daily labor and worry over his family’s well-being.”

“Before the prospective bride and bridegroom formalized their vows in Nuremberg, they were read the story of the first marriage, the subsequent fall of Adam and Eve, and mankind’s consequent guilt and need for penance and redemption.”

So at the service itself, Genesis 2 and 3 would be read. The couple’s assumption of that responsibility, self-discipline, and suffering of marriage—the husband’s toil, and the wife’s labor—was presented as part of the process by which mankind recovers from its fallen condition. See, so when we get to the penalty phase of what God says to Adam and Eve, it doesn’t just talk about marriage in isolation. It talks about the recovery of mankind from its fallen condition.

“Although this was not the most cheery of nuptial messages, both services exalted marriage as the foundation and nucleus of society and the divine instrument for its stability and reform.”

Let me read that again. These weren’t cheery wedding services, but they both highly exalted marriage as the foundation and nucleus of society and the divine instrument for its stability and reform.

“Little wonder that Lutherans described parents as priests and bishops. The home then was no introspective private sphere.”

Boy, the world has certainly redefined things. That’s what it is today, the private sphere.

“The home was no introspective private sphere, unmindful of society, but the cradle of civilization and citizenship, extending its values and example into the world around it. The habits and character developed within families became the virtues that shaped entire lands. Where today children were raised to be God-fearing, obedient, and virtuous, the reformers expected tomorrow to find a citizenry capable of self-sacrifice and altruism as well.”

“And the great house father books—these were books that kind of were compendiums of everything you need to know about how to run a household. Kind of like a to-do book for house fathers.”

“And the great house father books of the seventeenth century, written as comprehensive guides to the management of home and manner, direction of a household was presented as the highest human art. A father not only provided for the present and future needs of his immediate family, but also extended his household throughout the fatherland as its members assisted church and school, friends and neighbors, the poor and the needy.”

Now folks, that’s what we want. That’s a major goal of what we believe the Scripture tells us to do as a church: to equip families to be like this, and as a result to see the reformation of our society as well.

Now, Psalm 127, which we read responsibly two weeks ago, says—and this is the inspired poet. This is the elect of elects, the poet speaking, the Lord Jesus in his word:

“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It’s vain to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for he gives his beloved sleep. Behold, children are heritage of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward.”

See, it’s all about the family and the results then of building a town and a civilization. But it’s vain to try to build our families, to try to build our marriages on some basis other than what the Lord would have us do. We must look to the Lord and his word as the basis for our marital relationships. And that’s what we’re trying to do here by stressing these big themes from Genesis 2 and 3 and then stretching these sermons out into the weeks to come.

Okay. Now, you got two outlines. One is just sort of there for reference from two weeks ago, and the new one—I want you to start to turn to that now and we’ll start to go through this outline of the structure I’ve given you.

First of all, I have an introduction here. The title: “Love Left: Implications of the Fall for Marriage.”

Love left. Remember, in Revelation, what did the desirable bride, Ephesus, do wrong? She didn’t lose her first love. She left her first love. Adam and Eve don’t lose something here. I mean, they lose something in terms of paradise, but they leave God at the central juncture. And in our relationships, the big application point at the end of this sermon is husbands, don’t leave your love. Attend to her.

Okay. Now, implications of the fall for marriage. Adam and Eve narrative in chapters two and three primarily, although two and three are both outlined for us. This is a chiastic outline. You’ll know what that is now, right? You can see the indentation. You go in, you go out, and there’s significance to that, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

Chiastic outline of Genesis 2:5-3:24 from Gordon Wenham’s commentary on Genesis. Now, Wenham built this based on a couple of other guys, so you know, but just to let you know, this isn’t my outline. It’s Gordon Wenham’s outline, although I added an eighth point onto the end for the sake of today’s sermon with thematic observation. That’s in bold italics. And where you see bold italics in the rest of the outline, those are the sermon titles that I’ve tentatively written up for the next I don’t know four months—dozen sermons there out of these texts. And I want to go through those things slowly. But today I want to give you the overview and then make this single point of application to man at the end of the sermon.

Thematic observations:

Now, Genesis 2:5-3:24 is a unit. Remember, we said in chapter 2:4, this is the generation. Now, pick up your Bibles and look at Genesis 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth.” Earth and the heavens rather. See that? Now turn to chapter 5, chapter 5, verse 1: “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” Okay. And then turn to chapter 6, verse 9: “These are the generations of Noah.”

Okay. Now, we’re not going to look at all of them. I’ve listed the rest of those occurrences of that phrase—”These are the generations of X”—on your outline. The point here is that we don’t have to work at trying to figure out how Genesis divides up. God has given us internal structure through this ordering device. “These are the generations of” to tell us where the sections are.

When you interpret the Bible, you always want to look at the context. You want to look at the pericopy delimiter. It’s technical stuff. I learned that a couple years ago from a seminary student. Pericopy is a section of Scripture that’s kind of a unit, and the delimiters are what marks that unit off as well. As you can tell, and when you preach on something in the Scriptures, you want to kind of preach on that unit, you see.

So this whole unit here is 2:5 through the end of chapter 4. We know it because the Bible says so. It gives us these textual markers. So this unit is there, and we’re going to talk with part of that unit today. Now, this unit has couple three sections in it. It’s got the garden narrative in chapters 2 and 3. That’s rather obvious. He’s talking about the garden, Adam and Eve, and what happens to him. And then in the next section is Abel’s murder in the first portion of chapter 4. And at the end of chapter 4, Cain’s family. So you can look at it that way. And we’re going to deal with the first half of this—chapters 2 and 3—of this particular section.

So you know where we’re going here. And in this section, I’ve marked off some words here at the introduction. Remember, the underlining theme throughout this is this temple language that’s used. As I said before, it begins in chapter 2 with this life-flowing presence of God and these implications of it. You got gemstones, water, fruit, all this stuff. We’ll find its visual representations in the tabernacle and temple when they’re built later on in the history of mankind.

Remember, God puts Adam in the garden. Remember, we said that’s not the normal word for put. It’s like putting something in dedication or consecration to God. And it’s also used to put things in a position of rest in the land when God puts them in the land of rest. So it’s special, worship kind of—consecrated worship language.

Remember, Eve’s a helper, but that word almost always in the Bible talks about God being man’s helper. He’s to guard and till the land. But remember, the significance of the language there is that those two words, the bulk of how they’re used in the Old Testament by far, is in the context of the temple—the priests doing their work and guarding the different aspects of the temple.

There’s a deep sleep that comes upon Adam like a death and resurrection sacrifice. See, even before the fall, Adam goes through this recreation. Now, kids, when I say deep sleep, you know how you sleep at night, but when God puts Adam down to take Eve out of Adam’s side, it’s a deep sleep, it says. And that word isn’t used very often. And what it means is it’s almost like death. It’s a death-like sleep.

So he goes through this sacrifice, which is again brought out in the temple imagery later on in the Old Testament. The word for rib, boys and girls—this word for rib, God takes a rib out of Adam’s side, but that almost always, except for one place, that word rib is used of the architecture, the sides of the temple and tabernacle. The only other place is the side of a hill. Well, Adam’s like a little hill rising up to worship God.

And he goes up on hills. After he leaves the garden, he can’t be at the central sanctuary anymore. Everywhere he goes, he starts to build little piles of stones to worship God. And then pretty soon he goes up on a mountain to worship God. Big hill. And then God has him build like a picture of a mountain in this temple and tabernacle. See, it’s like this hill and ribs. And so the woman has real significance in terms of this whole worship model that he’s given to us in this special language of Genesis 2 and 3.

Even at the end of the story, when God clothe Adam and Eve, that word for clothe there is usually used. Again, this great number of occurrences is the clothing of the priests for the work they’re going to do in the temple. It’s also used to clothe the king. So the clothing is significant there. It’s not normal. We’re just putting on clothes. No, it’s clothing up to serve God. Even in the fallen state, God ministers grace. They’re going to serve.

The cherubim are stationed there at the east end of the garden. Why? Because that’s the entrance place. That’s where man could come back in through after they’re driven out. Do you know where you got to go into the temple from? You can probably guess, right? The doorway to the temple was always on the east because it’s the garden, you see, running through. You know where the cherubim are in the temple?

Cherubim in the temple are all over it. They’re on the veil that covers the holy of holies. There’s two actual 3D cherubim guarding the ark of the covenant, hovering over it, the mercy seat. And on the walls of the temple and tabernacle, these cherubim are embroidered into the walls. They’re there. They’re still guarding entrance to God.

Now, so it’s all temple kind of imagery that goes on here. They’re stationed there. And that word stationed as well is a significant word in terms of the worship of God. So the big picture here unpacks throughout the rest of the Scriptures about worship and it connects everything that we do—our marriages and our work and our recreations—to the worship of God. That’s the environment we were made in, to begin with. We were made for worshiping means. And as we are brought back to a state of actually more maturity than Adam and Eve, through the work of our Savior, we’ve got to realize that we’re brought back primarily to worship God and to glorify him.

This language goes throughout. But that wasn’t Adam’s experience that next day after his sin, was it? He woke up to this “sweet smell of a deep sorrow,” as it were. That whole song—he woke up. Now everything’s changed, and it’s dust and wind and problems. And this text, chapters 2 and 3, move us from this beautiful imagery of the presence of God to this terrible imagery of man expunged—or expelled, rather—expelled from the garden.

Okay, let’s go on now and go through these specific elements rather quickly.

First section: We talked about this two weeks ago. God, the garden, man, and Eve—man, excuse me. Not God in the garden, man and rule—God’s rule over man. And this is in chapter 2, just briefly reminding us of what happened in chapter 2. You remember that there was a long section where it talked about the Lord God and he made this garden and he forms Adam out of the dust of the ground and he puts him in the context of this garden to guard and till the garden.

And the garden’s a picture of delights. The rivers are flowing out of it. There’s trees. There’s beauty. I’ve talked all about that. So there’s this wonderful picture of the garden of Eden that’s given to us in chapter 2, verses 5-17.

Now, there’s this correlates to what happens at the end of the tale. There’s a big transition from this beautiful dwelling place of God and man’s delight in it, which is then balanced off—there’s an inversion, as it were—at the end of the story. In your outline, I go through some of this. There are recurring phrases in section one, and section seven—when man is actually expelled from the garden.

In the beginning, in chapter—in section one, he makes this tree of life. In chapter 7, he kicks Adam out of the garden so he won’t eat from the tree of life. In the beginning of these seven chapters or seven sections, he talks about how he made this garden eastward in Eden. Okay, so east of Eden is referred to. And at the end, the cherubim are stationed on the east side of Eden in chapter—in chapter 7, in the seventh section.

And those same two words are used in section one. Adam is made to till and guard. And in chapter—in the seventh section, those same two words are used, although in a different signification. So it ties together sections one and seven, and there’s an inversion. Something’s happened as we go to this central scene in verse 4, where Adam eats in disobedience. The results of that are fully played out by the time you get to the seventh section of this narrative.

From the dust of the land, Adam was put into the garden, but now he’s driven out of the garden and he’s going to become dust once more, okay, by the end of the narrative. So there’s this inversion of relationships. Something’s happened, something’s changed, and there are big themes there that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, and we’ll bring these big themes back when we go through these more detailed, more detailed sermons in the next couple of months.

Just, however, to briefly remind you of a couple of them: God is the Lord God. He is the Father. He is the covenant God of Israel, as well as the Sovereign God. Lord is Yahweh. It’s the covenant name, and he is that. But he is also God, or Elohim. He has sovereignty. He has love for the human race, and that is set forth in his name, Lord God. He makes all things. He’s the one that determines good. He says something is good, and he says other things aren’t good. And he says, “Man, it’s not good that you be alone.” And the first corrective he does for mankind is the provision of a helper.

Kids, you think you know what’s good for you. You look at ice cream and you want to eat it. You look at pretty candy and you want to eat it, and you want to eat a lot of it. In fact, you want to eat so much candy that if we just let you eat whatever much candy you wanted to eat whenever you ate it, you would get sick and die. You’d die because you wouldn’t eat good food, probably. You’d at least get sick. You’d get a tummy ache.

You’ve probably done that, haven’t you? Even adults don’t always know what’s best for them. They go out and eat mushrooms, and sometimes the mushroom looks like it’s a good mushroom, but it isn’t. And they eat that mushroom and die. Man doesn’t know what’s good for them. And our whole lives, one of the big things God is correcting us on perpetually is the idea that we can figure out what’s good for us in the context of marriage.

Men think they know what would make a good marriage. And usually what it means is the wife should be like them at least twenty-three and a half hours a day. We like to make woman like us because we know who we are, and that’s nice for us, except for a little bit of time during the day. But that isn’t good for us. God says he gives us a helper, complimentary to us. Our opposite, as it were, although a helper. We don’t know what’s good for us.

God knows. And we must be very attentive to what His word tells us.

Adam’s given a job, and it’s a holy job. Work is not something to be disliked. Now, it has implications from the fall, but originally that work is holy and good. He’s given dominion over the works of God. Okay. Now let’s look at section two, verses 18-25. Going through them quickly, because we talked about this two weeks ago.

Here we have the provision of a suitable helper. And I give you other indications in here in terms of the narrative stuff, why the particular chapters match up the way they do.

Sections two and six go together. In section two, of course, God says that it’s not good for man to be alone. He’s going to give him a helper suitable to him. And then God teaches Adam, as a good father would, of his need before he fills the need for him. Remember, he brings all the animals by, and Adam looks at them and he sees them paired up, and Adam starts to realize, “I have a need here.”

God lovingly trains his children in their needs so that then he will provide for their needs and the men will understand that God is taking care of them. After Adam comes to this realization, God puts this deep sleep upon Adam, takes a rib out, closes the flesh up, and then he brings the wife to Adam. That’s verse 22. He brought her to the man. Man didn’t just stumble across her. God the father here again lovingly and kindly and provisionally brings the wife to the man.

And Adam, his response, of course, is to sing forth. He sings forth in poetry. And we talked about that two weeks ago. And then we have a commentary that this is why God gives men a desire to cleave to women. It’s for this very reason that he would find his completion. He would find his joy and delight in the context of covenantal union with a wife. And so he relatively forsakes his father and mother and moves to form a new relationship with his wife. That’s what men are supposed to do. Now, special callings for some, but normatively, that’s the role of men.

Now, this section matches up with, as I said, section six. In both sections, God is the main actor. Man does, however, have a minor role, and the women and the animals are passive. Okay? Just like when God—section six is where God declares his judgments to man and then to the woman and then to the serpent. And these things match up. All four are present in both. God is the active agent in both. He is working. Very dominant activity of God is going on. Both scenes occur in the garden itself. And both scenes cover the hierarchy.

You know, man names the animals. Man names Eve—or woman, that is, in this second section. And in section six, that’s where man gives woman the name Eve, the mother of all living. So both in two and six, man names the woman. There’s hierarchy being talked about. There’s a relationship of hierarchy that God establishes in both, and that’s very pointed in both sections six and two.

They both end with reference to woman’s role as wife and then as mother—wife in chapter, or the—in the second section here, in verses 18-25, and mother at the end of the sixth section. And both of them also talk about clothing or lack thereof. The man and the woman are naked at the end of chapter, or this second section, and they’re not ashamed. They’re not embarrassed. And at the end of chapter 6, God makes clothing to cover up their nakedness. So there’s this correlation, but it’s an inverse correlation.

Again, in scene two, Adam is in companion relationship with the animals and with woman, isn’t he? The animals are coming out, and Adam’s naming all those animals. He’s got a good relationship with them. He’s controlling them. He’s doing his thing. They’re happy. And he’s got a relationship to his wife. That’s good. But by scene six, things ain’t so good anymore.

Now, man has perpetual warfare with the representative animal, the serpent. God puts enmity, hatred. And now, that’s why, kids, you run around and maybe you like snakes, but for the most part, men and snakes fight. Snakes nip at men’s heels, and men crush them and they shoot them and they kill them. Why is that? Well, one reason is because of this enmity that God has built in.

Everything’s different now. The wild beasts try to rip men apart. Now you see, our whole relationship with the created order has changed as a result of the fall. And that’s shown in scene two and six, both talking about those things and our relationship to our wives. We have changed. We move from poetry to accusation. We move from singing forth the praises of the one that God has given to us and delighting in who she is to saying, “Hey, that woman you gave me, she made me do it.”

You see, inverse relationship. The same themes are being played out. So our relationship to the created order and to our wives, to the animals and to our wives, and wives to their husbands have changed. Perpetual conflict between man and the serpent. Frustration in the relationship between Adam and woman. Why do you have trouble? Well, it’s right here for us in Genesis chapter 3.

Themes: goodness of marriage, again, and we’ve talked about that. Okay, now let’s go to new stuff. Chapter section three, scene three in the narrative for us. And this is verses 1-5, the temptation of the woman.

So the serpent comes along, and this starts in verse one of chapter 3. The serpent was more cunning. So the first thing God tells us is this serpent, who’s going to give us so much trouble—this guy’s sharp. This guy’s shrewd. This serpent is subtle, and he warns us even as reading the text. God wants us to know before we get to what the serpent says: Be careful here, because when you start reading what the serpent says, it’s subtle stuff.

This isn’t Dick and Jane stuff. This is Kierkegaard sort of stuff. And it’s worse than that because it isn’t so long-winded as most of these guys are. Very subtle.

The serpent comes along and he says, “Indeed.” That’s really what the emphasis is in the Hebrew. It starts that way. “Really? Really? God told you that you couldn’t eat from any of these trees?” Now, that’s subtle stuff. You may not notice it, but “really” automatically puts the idea in the woman’s mind, “Well, maybe this is wrong.” And then he tells her, “This is God that spoke to you.” And he leaves out: What does he leave out? Have you been listening very closely?

He refers to deity as God. What’s the rest of the text? Deity is Lord God. What does he leave out? The covenantal father element of God’s title. Now, to the serpent, he’s not really Yahweh, to the serpent, because Yahweh is to his people. See, the serpent’s subtle. He’s not really—he’s kind of using the name that God gives him for him. But he’s not addressing the woman by reminding her of Yahweh. He’s reminding her of God’s sovereignty, but not God’s love. You see?

And then he says, “So really, maybe you should think this through a little bit. Is this God, this sovereign, forget this Yahweh stuff, has he told you that you can’t eat of any of these trees?” Now, see, he lied there, right? I mean, it’s a half-truth. God did put restrictions, but he says, “Indeed, you shall not eat of every tree.” He overstates, by, you know, a thousand miles, God’s prohibition.

You keep that law stuff that law that says you can’t walk more than twenty paces on the Sabbath. Really, that’s what your sovereign, Calvinistic God tells you. You see, it’s subtle stuff. Much more than that, too. We’ll talk about this in a few weeks in more detail. But the serpent is subtle. He’s shrewd. He comes to Eve with some really slick stuff. And the woman right away, she starts messing up.

She says, “Well, we can eat of the fruit of the trees.” She doesn’t say, “Look at all these trees. We can eat from any one of these trees except for one.” Now, she says, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it.’”

Now, I know you might say, “Well, maybe Adam told her that, or maybe God really—” I don’t think so. I think the text is telling us she falls into the serpent’s deception. She starts saying it’s more than it is. Now, it’s not if we just eat from it now, we can’t touch it. God didn’t say that. Nothing in the text tells us God did. Woman starts to get confused. Serpent comes back and he says, “You will not surely die.” Now, that’s a tough phrase. We’ll look at a little more detailed in months to come, but believe me, it’s not at all obvious in the Hebrew, apparently. I don’t know Hebrew, but I trust these commentators I read, and it’s not obvious what he’s saying there.

Could he’s saying, “Certainly, you will die?” That’s what some people think he’s saying. “Certainly, you won’t die,” or “Are you certain that you’ll die?” His language is real ambiguous here. He involves himself in ambiguity of language. He’s very subtle. He’s very tricky.

And all he’s got, you notice, he is a subordinate, right? Man rules over the beasts. And the beast doesn’t tell the woman, “Hey, eat that fruit.” He’s not that stupid. He doesn’t appeal to his dominion over woman because she knows she’s in charge.

What he appeals to is what? What is it? It’s pride. “Hey, you think this through? Is this really what your God says?” See, that’s where the temptation comes. It comes from underneath, from those in subordinated relationships to us. It comes by way of pride, applying to our pride, not through appealing to our outright rebellion. And what does Eve do? She falls right into it. And what she says then is, “Hey, you know what? I should maybe look this over.”

And then the serpent also throws in this contradiction to who God is, God’s loving nature. He says, “Well, you know, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be open and you’ll be like him, determining good and evil. That’s why he doesn’t want you eating it. He’s got ulterior motives, you see.” So serpent’s real subtle.

And the woman falls for it. But at this point, at least the temptation scene, we won’t get to section four, which will be the actual fall, but in the temptation scene, we see some very important themes for us that we’ll look at in future weeks.

The theme that specifically a sermon we’re going to do in a few weeks is probably next week actually—this is this sermon—language, the nature of temptation and the subtlety of our enemy. So we’ll talk more about that next week: temptation.

Then, right at the center now, we’ve moved in through these series of movements toward the center of the text. The center of the text is the fall of Adam and Eve directly in section four, verses 6-8, the fall.

And here’s what happens. She’s given in to this subtle temptation. And what does she do? She examines the evidence. It’s all he wanted her to do. Look at it a different way. Don’t just move on the basis of outright obedience. Think it through yourself. I thought a lot about the public schools these last few days. This is just what they do. They’re going to tell you they hate God.

They’re going to say, “You got to think it through for yourself.” And they want to get you to examine the evidence. And then people say, “Well, gee, does it really say that he made the world in six days? Maybe it didn’t. Let’s look at the evidence. Let’s go to archaeology for our answer.” You see, and men get off the track and they end up thinking they don’t believe in the sixth-day creation anymore because they’ve shifted from a simple, ethical, obedient position to what God has clearly stated.

And they’ve questioned what God says. And then for the answer to the question, they don’t turn to the Holy Spirit. They turn to the evidence that their eyes see. And that’s what Eve did. She starts looking. “Well, let’s look at the evidence here, actually. Okay, this command is kind of fuzzy. I’m not sure what was all about. Let’s look at the evidence.” And she looks, and she sees.

She sees that this thing’s going to be tasty. Tree is good for fruit. It’s pleasing to the eyes. There’s nothing. It’s not all shriveled up and ugly. Doesn’t look dangerous. That candy doesn’t look spoiled. The tree desirable to make one wise. “Well, if there’s a relationship between this and wisdom, I’m sure God wants me to know things. Maybe it’s now that I should know these things.”

As a result, she then takes. Now, this section, verses 6-8, up to now, the action’s been kind of slow and narrative style, and now it’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. She looks, she sees this three-fold delight of the fruit. She takes the fruit, she then gives it to the husband who is with her, and he eats. Where’s the husband been? He’s been right there. That’s what the Hebrew says. Adam’s been there the whole time. That’s what the Hebrew says: that Adam was with her when she’s going through this temptation.

And as she takes from the fruit, she eats it and she gives it to the husband. Now, this is the critical element. You may think the deed’s done, but it isn’t because at the center of 3:6-8 is Adam. When God comes walking back in a little bit and starts questioning people, he doesn’t start with Eve. And he doesn’t start with the snake. He starts with the covenantal head, Adam.

And we’re going to look at covenantal headship from this text and from the rest of the Bible and say, “What is it and what isn’t it?” See, Adam doesn’t got to eat yet. Some people think that he wanted that wife to eat. He’s got a lot more ribs. If she dies,

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