Dennis Tuuri

The particular verse we want to stress today is Genesis 3:10. We will read the whole chapter to put us in the proper context for consideration of the topic of sin, fear, alienation, and prayer. So please stand and we will read Genesis 3.

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 in the garden.’” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat 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 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?”

And 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 you have done?” 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.”

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.” Then to Adam he said, “Because you have heeded the word 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 from 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.

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now lest he put out his hand and take also 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.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. And we thank you that we acknowledge that this book is unlike any other book. It must be spiritually discerned. And we pray, Father, your Holy Spirit would indeed write the words of this portion of your scripture upon our hearts. Help us to take it deep into our being that we may be transformed through your word and by your grace.

We thank you that we can ask this confidently knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for our sin. The second Adam has redeemed those who are elect in him and we stand now in your presence the recipients of your great blessing. We pray then Lord God that you would work on our hearts that we might indeed work on our lives this week according to your principles, precepts and truths. In Christ’s name we ask.

Amen. Please be seated.

We finished up well, mostly Thursday night, the final move from our house. There was a pretty good-sized truckload left and Chris W. and I and Michael L. and some of the kids, I think. Were they all with us? I don’t think so. Don’t remember. It’s been a busy week. And we’re over there and we kind of didn’t know what to do next. You know how it gets when you get right down to kind of the end and it’s kind of chaotic and stuff is just sort of sitting around in small piles.

It seemed that God sort of moved. I just took up a broom and I started to sweep in the kitchen and dining room and that seemed to be the turning point for the evening. I bring it up because you know we read in the creation account that the Spirit of God moves upon the chaos and disorder of the creation to bring forth order. And in our lives, the Spirit of God moves upon us in various ways to bring order out of chaos.

And what I want to talk about today is the process by which we bring order out of chaos as it were in our own lives and the life of our marriages, the life of our family and the culture as well. I use it also as an example of service and leadership. I suppose I could have, and I’m not saying it would be improper for me to begin barking out orders, but in the providence of God, it was a far better thing to do—to sweat, to grab a broom, to start stirring up dust, which my skin doesn’t like and my lungs don’t like.

And as Adam was caused to lay down and sacrifice that his wife might be brought forth, in the grace of God, I don’t say this to commend myself. I don’t normally do it. I’m normally the barking type. But in the grace of God, I think he was giving me an illustration for this sermon: that’s what we need to do. We need to get down, lead by example, sweat, and sacrifice for our families. And God indeed will bring order out of the chaos.

We’ve been talking about the role of husbands and wives. And we said that men have this responsibility to have a disposition and nature to lead responsibly and sacrificially—to lead, to govern, and specifically to do things that provide and protect for his wife and his family. And really that has a relationship to men and women in our culture generally speaking as well. And we’ve kind of drawn out the perfect triangle somewhat from these texts the last few weeks of what it should mean to have a relationship in which the husband’s doing what he’s supposed to do and the wife is doing what she’s supposed to do, which is to have a disposition, a nature, a desire to yield to the proper direction of her husband.

Now, she can’t always do it. It’s sin for a woman to follow her husband into sin. But she should want to strengthen and nurture her husband so that he can be a better leader and that he can nurture her. There’s a complementariness—a complementariness between husbands and wives that the scriptures plainly teach. Adam was given a helpmate who was his complement. Men and women have needs, they have deficiencies, they have shortcomings. Those aren’t bad. Those are the grace of God to cause us to see our need for one another.

So if you think you have no need of your wife, you’re wrong. If you think you have no need of your husband, you’re wrong. In the scriptures, we have needs for each other. I gave a talk at camp which I think I’m going to do a sermon on one of these days about how when you become a teenager, you sort of differentiate into half a person, meaning you recognize your need for another.

Now, some people are called to singleness. I’m not denying that in the scriptures, but generally speaking, God says that men and women are to be married. And so he brings this awareness to you of your needs and your need for a mate. And we talked about that a lot in the last few weeks. And we’ve talked in ways that I suppose would have brought some degree of conviction to husbands and wives. And I suppose I’ve undoubtedly stressed husbands a bit more because of the nature of the text.

Now, it does—I pointed out how really it doesn’t let Eve off the hook and it doesn’t let Adam off the hook. They both are culpable for their sin as we’ve talked about the last few weeks. But still, man leads. We had a rooster years ago with some hens and the rooster died and then one of the hens started to try to crow in the morning and it was somewhat of a pathetic attempt and she did that for years. I mentioned how the second dog of our troop of two dogs, when the first dog died, began to bite tires—try to bite tires, chase cars the way the first dog had done. He took over the position. And while we can be upset about the version of femininity that the world speaks of today, I think it is crystal clear that what the world needs is a reassertion of true biblical male leadership.

There was a book written years ago and the title really is all you need to know about the book. The book wasn’t all that significant, but the title was “Passive Men, Wild Women.” And that’s what happens when men go passive. Women turn into quasi roosters that are trying to make up for the leadership lack of the men.

Well, so the point of today is to say, what do we do about all this? What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a husband who acts like a drunken sailor or a wife who acts like a drunken sailor? I don’t mean drunken sailor literally, but what do you do when you don’t act according to the stuff we’ve talked about the last few weeks and when your mate doesn’t meet that perfect triangle standard either?

And of course, you won’t—to varying degrees. None of us will meet up to the standards of scripture. Scripture gives us the perfect triangle. The illustration is from philosophy where the idea is that every triangle you draw is a representation of some ideal triangle. Well, the scriptures give us an ideal conception of what married life should be. It says this is the way it should look. This is the way it should be. And we don’t want to stop aiming for that, but we don’t want to think we can achieve that in our own power or flesh.

And we have to recognize that we’re going to come short and our mates are going to come short. So what do we do with that? How do we move about biblical correction in our relationships in driving out personal sin and helping our mates to deal with sin as well?

Now, I’m talking about marriage, but this obviously has implications for single people, for children, because what we’re really talking about is sanctification and how it occurs. And I think that as we look at this pattern of Adam—that he moves from sin to a sense of guilt of sin, of course, to fear, alienation, isolation first from God and then from Eve, and then God expels him from his presence—but gives prayer as the mechanism to seek God out.

We see the things that are very common for us in our Adamic nature. We’re fallen in Adam. He was the covenantal head of the race. And these are things that we’re going to experience as well. We’re going to experience sin, fear, alienation. And hopefully that’ll lead us to prayer and a calling on God.

Now, the scriptures say that contentment with godliness is great gain. And I would—I fear—I don’t fear, but I certainly hope and pray that what I said these last few weeks has not produced an unhealthy or unbiblical discontentment with your mate. Contentment with godliness is great gain and you should be content and thankful for the situation that God has placed you in.

We’ve said the same prayer of confession for several months now. And I keep thinking about changing it, but I don’t want to change it until we’re done with this section of Genesis 2 and 3. Why? Because it says when we confess our sins, as you did this morning, “It is my fault. It is my fault. It is my own fault. It is my own most grievous fault.” And so don’t be discontent with your mate unless you’re discontent with yourself also. Your sin is your sin. Contentment with godliness is great gain.

On the other hand, I think it’s also wrong to say that you shouldn’t seek to change yourself or your mate. If Adam’s job is to guard and nurture his wife, and the wife’s job is to strengthen Adam for the work that he’s called to do, then obviously what God expects to see happen in the context of marriage or in our lives as single people is a maturation, a going from glory to glory as Chris spoke of earlier.

And so God wants us to change and he wants our mates to change. So we want to be content to a degree with where we’re at today. But then move toward this example that God gives us in scripture of what a relationship should look like, but move forward according to his principles and in his way.

How do we do this? Well, first I think we seek this change as I said in our own lives first. The scriptures say take out the beam in your own eye before you approach the splinter in your brother’s eye. And there’s a relationship here to the Adamic fall.

Here’s the deal, okay? So what I’m suggesting is we start with ourselves. We start with contentment in the short term. We look for change in the long term. And now let’s talk about how that change is effective.

The scriptures tell us in Romans and Galatians and many other places that by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight. Galatians 2: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, the faith of Christ—even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

Adam’s Adamic nature seeks to justify itself by works of the law. But you could say that Adam’s sin in grasping for the knowledge of good and evil—its fruit was an impatience—not allowing, not waiting patiently to mature until God said he was ready to eat of that particular tree and exercise law and rule. God said that every tree of the garden was given for man to eat. So the prohibition on that tree seems to be temporary and we certainly know that the law is given not to be used to justify ourselves.

The law is given to redeemed people. Exodus 20—the Ten Commandments are given to people who have been redeemed, not as a way to redeem them. And it begins with a statement of that: “I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” I am your God. I am the Lord God. I am father sovereign. Believe me, trust me. Have faith in me in terms of your justification. Now, I’m going to give you a law, he says, but don’t think that law can make you perfect or can save you.

Well, we know all that, Dennis. Well, here’s the problem. As you lay out the law for marriage and what the responsibility should look like, your Adamic nature will seek to sanctify itself by that law. It will seek to take that law apart from grace and faith in Christ and change yourself or change your mate.

Adam worked real hard after he sinned to take care of things. Don’t think that he was lazy about it. He sewed fig leaves—him and Eve worked together hard to protect themselves from God. They worked hard in hiding in the trees. And then when God finally comes and says “Where are you?” and they come out, still they’re working hard by producing what they think is a justification for their sin. Him blaming her, blaming the snake.

Adam worked hard. The answer to our problems—what to do with the drunken sailor—is not hard work alone. What it is is a reliance in faith on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to provide for us our justification and our sanctification—to receive the law of what it means to be a good husband or a good wife in faith, relying on the grace of God to make provision for us instead of relying upon our abilities to change ourselves or to change our mates.

So a Christ-centered sanctification is what the scriptures talk about and we’re going to talk about that today as these big issues play themselves out in the life of Adam. This is what we’re going to be seeing. The process by which we seek change is not simply hard work. And in fact, we must always be careful not to work in the power of the flesh to sanctify ourselves because that’s what the Adamic nature—as we see clearly in Genesis 3—will do in his fallen state.

God says don’t rely upon that fallen state. Don’t try to work hard. Don’t try to change yourself or your mate apart from the grace of Christ and faith in Christ’s redemptive work.

Okay. Adam tried to cover the consequences. He tried to protect himself from God. He engaged in a reduction of vulnerability before God on his part, through his works, his hard work before God, to provide well-being in terms of his sin. He worked hard but he worked wrong. All things that he did, his working hard, did not make him pleasing before God. His hard work was, as recorded in Genesis 3, a howling indictment against the Adamic nature in its attempts to sanctify itself and put things right in his life.

He tried to do it. He worked hard, but he did not work right.

The scriptures tell us to deny ourselves, to take up the cross, to follow Christ. And I want to suggest that we do that in four specific ways.

First, we do this by following Christ—to look at the context of Adam’s sin in relation to the truth of God’s forgiveness. And I’ve already alluded to this, but self-justification was Adam’s means. Self-sanctification was what the Adamic nature does, as opposed to God’s protection and provision. Adam had sinned, but in his first sin—a moving in autonomy to grasp for himself, to determine for himself what was good and wrong, good and evil—to determine for himself the standard by which he would live.

He then compounded that sin by not crying out immediately to God when the sense of guilt came upon him, to provide for clothing for him, to provide protection for him in reference to God.

I want to read from John Calvin’s commentary here on Genesis 3 about Adam’s efforts here in the garden. He says, “They—that is Adam and Eve—sew together for themselves girdles of leaves. For what end? That they may keep God at a distance as by an invincible barrier.”

Now, what he’s saying here—John was talking about this last week at Patty Evans’s birthday party to me—that, you know, Adam and Eve aren’t immediately isolated from each other after their sin. They work together to try to provide for themselves clothing to protect themselves from something. Their nakedness was not a sense of shame toward each other. Apparently, it was a sense of a loss of protection relative to God. They knew their vulnerability, that their defenses had departed relative to God.

And so Calvin says that what they were trying to do is to provide a barrier between them and God. He goes on to say, “Their sense of evil therefore was only confused and combined with dullness, as it is wont to be the case, and unquiet sleep. There is none of us who does not smile at their folly since certainly it was ridiculous to place such a covering before the eyes of God. In the meanwhile, we are all infected with the same disease. For indeed we tremble and are covered with shame at the first at the first compunctions of conscience. But self-indulgence soon steals in and induces us to resort to vain trifles as if it were an easy thing to delude God. Therefore, unless conscience be more closely pressed, there is no shadow of excuse too faint and fleeting to obtain our acquiescence.”

So he’s saying that Adam compounds his guilt by doing something that is absolutely ridiculous—to try to protect himself from God with this scant clothing of fig leaves. But we do the same thing when we start to move in terms of sin and we recognize a sense of guilt about that. We think we can cover it up relative to God with similar trifles. Instead of treating sin as sin, which needs to be confessed before God, we treat sin as a problem in our lives that needs to be fixed by us.

You see the difference? Adam should have recognized his sin created a breach that could only be repaired by God. Now, God would have him put on the clothes that God made for him. Adam’s involved in the work. The law is good when used lawfully in relationship to faith. But to try—by works of the law or by deeds of the flesh apart from reliance upon God—to take care of the problems our sin has created, that’s what Adam did. And that’s what our Adamic nature will do unless we move to correction.

Then, rather, as we’ve already said, Adam and his wife were yet ignorant of their own vileness with a covering so light. They attempted to hide themselves in the presence of God. And then Calvin quotes on this verse—the woman—when Adam is then approached by God and he says, “The woman you gave me to be with me, she gave me of the fruit and I did eat.” He says, “The boldness of Adam now more clearly betrays itself. For so far from being subdued, he breaks forth into coarser blasphemy. He had before been tacitly expostulating with God. Now he begins openly to contend with him and triumphs as one who has broken through all barriers.

Whence we perceive what a refractory and indomitable creature man began to be when he became alienated from God. For a lively picture of corrupt nature is presented to us in Adam from the moment of his revolt. Everyone—as James—is tempted by his own concupiscence. And even Adam, not otherwise than knowingly and willingly, had set himself as a rebel against God. Yet just as if conscious of no evil, he puts his wife as the guilty party in his place. Therefore have I eaten, he says, because she gave. And not content with this, he brings in the same at the same time an accusation against God, objecting that the wife who had brought ruin upon him had been given by God.

We also—trained in the same school of original sin—are too ready to resort to subterfuges of the same kind, but to no purpose. For howsoever incitements and instigations from other quarters may impel us, yet the unbelief which seduces us from obedience to God is within us. The pride is within which brings forth contempt. Because of that pride, because of Adam’s nature, he moves not in terms really of a recognition of sin on his part. He moves in terms of an awareness of a difficulty in his life that he doesn’t like.

And in our marriages, what we want to be very careful to do is to see that our problems are problems of sin. They are not problems of circumstances. Sin is a wonderful thing. Sin can be forgiven by God. Sin can be dealt with at the foot of the cross when we acknowledge that it is indeed our fault, our own fault, our own most grievous fault.

Now, Adam’s self-justification and his self-sanctification is represented by way of a picture of him clothing himself with the fig leaves. And in contrast to this, God by the end of the story that we read clothes Adam with skins from animals. Now I’ve talked about the special words that are used in Genesis. And the word for clothe there—where it talks about the animal skins—is not the normal word for just covering.

I’ve given you some references there. We won’t look at them now. But it’s used primarily of two things: to clothe kings and to clothe priests. What I’m saying is that we got problems in our marriages. We got problems in our personal life. We got problems in our families. We got problems with our employees or employers. We got problems in the world round about us. And God says to fix those problems, we don’t want to take fig leaves—our view of looking at how things must be fixed, even if they may be the principles of God’s word, even if it may be the law.

We don’t take the law in our own flesh and our own abilities and sew together coverings to take care of the problem. We confess sin and we ask God to enable us—to cover us with his covering, his justification, his sanctification. The fig leaves they sew together are a little girdle or a belt, very skimpy clothing. The tunic that God makes for them is nearly full length, goes down about the knees or maybe a little lower.

They make these puny little fig leaf coverings that are small and leaves. God provides them skins of animals. I don’t know if they had fur on them or not, but for the illustration that I’ve used here, that’s what I’m picturing—is that the skin of the animal has its fur on it and they then are clothed with God the way he would clothe a king or a priest.

When we put aside our view of taking care of the problems in the way that we want to do it in our own flesh—taking the law apart from faith in Christ and applying it to our lives—we try. We end up being skimpily clothed and not protected. But when we turn to God and confess sin and that sin is forgiven by God, and he then leads us in terms of the correct application of his law to our situation, then we end up clothed in the glorious robes of Christ’s righteousness and reempowered as kings and priests.

Sin and forgiveness. How do we—how are you working on your marriage? Are you trying to fix the problems or are you acknowledging your own sin in the relationship and confessing that sin to God and relying upon his provision in terms of your sanctification and the corrections that need to be made in your life? God says if you do that, if we rely upon him, he clothes us with strength and power from on high.

Secondly, Adam moves first in terms of a failure to comprehend fully his sin. And Adam moves in terms then of fear—not a godly fear, but an ungodly fear. Fear and atonement. Do we hide or reveal ourselves? Do we accuse our mates or do we accept the consequences? Do we accept responsibility for our own sin? Do we move in terms of bondage or do we move in terms of liberty?

What do we do with this mess in our lives that we make as a result of our sin? Now, Hebrews 2—we’ve talked about this text before—but it says that Christ came to deal with fear. That fear of death held us in bondage to sin prior to Christ’s coming. And that with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ and with his death on the cross, we’re now released from that fear and able to serve God correctly.

Now, it may seem like a small thing, but look at the practical application in terms of your life. You may have been convicted these past few weeks about some area, particularly of your marriage—your failure to meet your responsibilities as husband and wife, as children, as single people in relationship to your community or to God. And the question is, is that conviction going to leave you in a place of paralyzing fear the way it did Adam, hiding from God, compounding his problem because he now moves away from the very source of his help, which is God himself? Or will the proper sense of guilt call us to call upon God to remove that fear by an application of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ?

You see, if we fear and we want to try to fix our own problems, that fear is going to drive us in isolation away from God the way it did with Adam. But if we understand that at the heart of our sanctification is an application of the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we move in terms of liberty. Then we move in terms of forgiveness. Then we move in terms of empowerment.

Now the same thing is true of our mates. Are we in our discussions—in our attempts to try to move ourselves and our mates along in the process of righteousness—are we increasing their fear that drives them away from us and God? Or are we being like God who calls Adam, “Where are you?” and draws him to a sense of his own shame through a series of questions?

Same thing with our children. If all we do is bellow out the thunders of God’s law against impenitent sinners, okay, as opposed to reminding our children that they’ve been redeemed by the blood of Christ and they shouldn’t fear to confess their sin because Christ has dealt with it definitively at the cross once and for all, then we minister to them that atonement that is the release from bondage to sin.

Turn if you will to 1 Peter 3. Now this is a place where we’ll come back to again and again in this series on marriage. It’s a great synopsis of the responsibilities of husbands and wives in the first few verses. And it certainly starts with a series of excellent exhortations to women that we want to look at in some detail in the future.

But here’s what I want you to see particularly in this text. He says in verse 6 he gives Sarah as the example of the godly woman. Actually in verse 5 he says if you obey ungodly husbands—even if you submit not in their sin but having a disposition to follow their lead and to be governed by them. He says that in verse 5 you be like these holy women of old who in manner of former times—the holy women trusted in God and as a result adorned themselves.

And then in verse 6, “As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are, if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.” See, terror is what the writer—that Peter here—writes as the thing that will keep a wife from submission. Now, it may sound wrong, but terror can bring about a slavish submission, but it can’t bring about a godly biblical submission.

And so wives are exhorted to put aside fear and husbands are exhorted—as the masters were earlier in 1 Peter 2—to put aside threatenings, because it increases this fear which increases the Adamic temptation to move in terms of fear and slavish bondage to sin.

Then we’re told that the husbands are to give honor to the wife as unto the weaker vessel, understanding that they can be put into this position of terror that is not good for them. And then as it goes on in the text, it tells both husband and wife to do particular things. And in verse 14 we read, “Even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you are blessed. Do not be afraid of their threats nor be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God in your heart.”

So again there, the key to following through in our horizontal relationships—both with people in the church and with unbelievers outside of the church, no matter what position of authority they have in our culture—the key to doing that in a godly way is this removal of this ungodly fear that has been accomplished for us by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And indeed, to drive this point home, he does just that. He takes the reader of the epistle now to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 17: “It is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good rather than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh that we might live by the spirit.”

If we’re going to fix ourselves—the difficulties that we have, the failures that we have, our sins, and our want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God—if we’re going to do something about those things, we do not want to move in terms of the fear that Adam showed. We want to say that the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed us and has put to death the fear of death for us that holds us in bondage to sin. And as a result, we’re able to mutually move forward in encouragement, applying the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The process of sanctification includes the application of the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ in relationship to a confession of our sin. The process of our sanctification involves with it an application of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ which takes away the unreasonable fear, the ungodly fear, the fear that is terror that holds us in bondage to sin as it did in our Adam and will do in our Adamic nature.

Third, the application of the Lord Jesus Christ and faith in his work brings us a degree—brings us the application of his reconciliation that he’s effected relative to our alienation. Adam sins. Adam gets fearful. Adam hides from God and tries to hide from God in the context of his wife. What does Adam and Eve do? Well, they get fearful and as the result they alienate themselves from God.

First, by trying to sew fig leaves instead of asking for his covering. They sew fig leaves together—is the first thing they do to hide. Secondly, they hide in the midst of the trees. And even when God finally calls them out of the trees to come talk to them, they hide by the use of words. Adam doesn’t say, “I sinned.” Out of his fear, he tends to cover his sin up. And each of those three things—Adam and then Eve, who blames the serpent instead of herself—they alienate themselves further and further from God.

And now notice that it doesn’t stop there. The alienation moves on from one another. First, they’re alienated from God. They’re together trying to sew the fig leaves and hide in the trees. And then when they continue their subterfuge, their failure to deal with their sin correctly by way of confession, then they start ticking off each other. Adam blames Eve.

What do you think it was like that first morning when they wake up, not in the garden of life anymore, but cut off from life and beauty and food, and now they’re outside of the garden? There’s no way they can get back in. What do you think that first conversation between Adam and Eve was like? We don’t know. But it probably was like a lot of conversations that even Christian couples have today. Instead of a unity, instead of a oneness of flesh, there’s a tearing at each other. And it begins with Adam’s accusation of his wife’s culpability for his sin.

So there’s alienation that occurs as a result of Adam’s sin. First from God and then secondly in relationship to man on the horizontal plane as well. The scriptures tell us that there’s a tremendous movement—as we said last week—from poetry to accusation, from a wonderful culmination of human unity and the giving of the first wife to the husband and then a complete separation from each other as they try to alienate, as they try to hide themselves from God, they end up alienated from one another.

And even they’re alienated from the created order, aren’t they? The serpent also was part of that judicial inquiry and then the pronouncement of the sentence. And they’re alienated from the culture and the world as well. Alienation is at the heart of sin.

Now, Job in chapter 9:33 speaks of the need for a daysman or an umpire. Beginning at verse 32 in Job 9: “He that is God is not a man as I am, that I may answer him or that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us who may lay his hand on us.”

Now the word for mediator there refers to this ancient eastern custom of a daysman, an umpire who would come up between two people who are having a fight or dispute. They were alienated from each other and he would bring reconciliation. And he would put a hand on this guy’s shoulder and a hand on this guy’s shoulder and he’d bring peace between them, much like dads do and moms with their own kids. You know, we don’t just try to take care of the fight. We try to bring reconciliation to the kids because we know that sin brings alienation.

Well, Job said, “My problem is not ultimately alienation from man. That can be taken care of through an umpire. My problem is alienation from God. He’s upset with me. He’s angry with me.” Who’s the umpire? Who’s the mediator? Who’s the daysman that can bring reconciliation between us and God?

Well, the obvious answer is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, to move along in the process of sanctification means to have faith in Jesus Christ as the forgiver of our sins, as the atonement that removes us from fear, and third, as the means of reconciliation by which God has reconciled us to him and also works that reconciliation through in the context of the greater world.

Alienation in Genesis 3, as we said, has been obvious. Whereas the man and the woman had life, at the end of the process, they now have death. Whereas pleasure, now pain. Whereas abundance, now a meager subsistence of toil. Whereas perfect fellowship, they now have alienation and conflict. And it’s very important to see that behind this alienation is first and foremost the alienation from God.

In the text, it is given for us that way. And we know from other portions of scripture that our ultimate alienation that leads to alienation from each other is alienation from God. David said, “Against thee, against thee, only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.” Now, he’d sinned against Bathsheba, but ultimately all sin is against God first. And alienation occurs first in relationship to God and then secondly in relationship to our mates.

Simple truth. We all know that truth. We’ve all heard that truth a number of times. But again, how do we go about—what do we do with a drunken sailor? What do we do with ourselves and our mates to move us along to our biblical righteousness? You know, do we apply that truth? Do we seek to have our mate and ourselves reconciled to God? They’re sinning against us. We’re sinning against them. But ultimately, the work has to go on in relationship to God and then work itself out in terms of the marriage relationship.

And all too often, we’re like Adam. We’ll try to take care of the consequences, try to make it better with our wives or our husbands or our children or our parents, forgetting that all sin at its root is alienation from God and needs the application of the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philip Edgecomb Hughes, writing in an article in praise of Cornelius Vantil, talks about how man is an image bearer of God. He said the image of God is stamped upon his creature—God’s creature man—that is at the very heart of his being. Man is answerable to God for his life that has been given to him. He cannot contract out of this answerability simply because he is what he is, namely man. The creator-creature relationship is essential to his existence and the image of God is constitutive of his humanity. The fulfillment of his being is dependent on these two fundamental factors: creator-creature relationship and the image of God.

To deny them is to cut the life from which alone gives meaning and purpose to his being. In doing so, he inevitably cuts himself adrift and experiences alienation and disintegration at the very heart of his being. The scriptures teach us that is the truth. That when we cut ourselves apart or attempt to not image God correctly, we move in terms of alienation and disintegration.

Ephesians 4:18 tells us that we had our understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us because of the blindness of our heart. Our sin brings alienation from the mind of God and that alienation works itself out in alienation on the horizontal sphere with our wives and our husbands. The point is again—to fix the thing correctly and biblically—is to turn to God and understand that in his grace he is showing us our need for a further degree of fellowship, union and communion with him.

Sin is forsaking the Lord and when we forsake the Lord we cleave to sin. When we cleave to sin, we leave God. And the answer to turning that around is not to try to patch up our relationship with our fellow mates on a horizontal sphere. But ultimately, it’s to patch up our relationship with God. To leave sin and cleave to God. And as a result of cleaving to God, to cleave to our mates.

Now, it is to recognize that the work of the Lord Jesus Christ has affected this. Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God. We’ve been reconciled through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 2:12 says, “At one time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation.”

Apart from Christ, we’re alienated. In Christ, we’re brought near and reconciled to God. The answer is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The answer isn’t to work harder at unity with our spouses only apart from the work of Christ. It is to work harder at understanding the relationship that Christ has accomplished for us in his mediatorial work—that he has reconciled us to God and that our sin is primarily against God and reconciliation has been effected by the work of Christ—and to apply that reconciliation in the context of our marriages.

Now sometimes what this means is that as we begin to work through a problem in our marriages or in our lives, we recognize our own sin. We seek forgiveness through Christ. We recognize that our fear has been removed through the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we recognize the breach that we have created with our sin between us and God has been taken care of—not as a result of our efforts but by the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we come to a degree of reconciliation with him. But we still got problems in the world round about us. The psalmist knew of this in Psalm 39:12. “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Do not be silent at my tears, for I am a stranger with you, a sojourner as all my fathers were.”

The psalmist found himself in great difficulties at times. He found himself a stranger not to God but a stranger with God. In other words, alienation from man will not automatically be taken care of as we take care of the difficulty of our relationship to God. We may be united and reconciled to God, but we may find ourselves an even greater stranger in the context of our horizontal relationships in the short term.

In other words, it may be that your husband or your wife is a drunken sailor and is going to stay that way for quite some time. But your job is to be a stranger with God in the context of that—to not allow that sin to lead you into sin and cause your relationship to God to be disrupted, to seek reconciliation with God. And on the basis of that then it puts you in the position to minister to your spouse, to your child, to your father, whatever it is.

Now the scriptures are over and over giving us lots of exhortations to horizontal reconciliation as well. Christ has provided reconciliation with the father. In Christ, we’re reconciled. Outside of Christ, we’re not reconciled. The application of Christ in our life—are calling out to God for forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation on the basis of Christ’s work—is the beginning of the solving of our problems. But it doesn’t stop there.

As much as it’s true that we’ve sinned against God and ultimately and primarily, it’s also that we sin against one another. And it’s easy to say, “I have a good relationship with God,” and redefine God in terms of who you think God is. First John says that if a man says he loves God and hates his neighbor, he lies.