Genesis 3:1-7: The Fall

Genesis 3:1-7: The Fall

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Genesis, and today the next passage we come to is Genesis 3:1-7. It says,

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 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 ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, what a privilege it is to open and study your word. We understand that these words come from your very mouth. They’re God-breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. So help us, by your Holy Spirit, to be thoroughly equipped for each of those things and ultimately to come to a deeper knowledge, a deeper love, and a deeper relationship with you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

From the very beginning, God’s given us a choice about how to live—a choice between his ways and our ways. And the difference couldn’t be more striking. His ways lead to blessing, while our ways lead to disaster. His ways lead to joy, while ours lead to misery. His ways lead to fullness, while ours lead to emptiness. And ultimately, his ways lead to life, while our ways lead to death. Yet, for some reason, we’re still often tempted to choose our ways. Our hearts just seem to be inclined in that direction. And Scripture certainly confirms that. 

Yet, that’s not the only reason why we so often choose our ways. As we’re going to see this morning from Genesis 3, we have an adversary, known as the devil or Satan, who, by the way, isn’t just a symbol of evil but is actually a very real and personal being. And he’s made it his mission to turn us away from the ways of God and lead us down a path to destruction. So, you might say that we’re in the midst of a spiritual war. And if we fail to realize that we’re in the midst of a war, we’ve basically already lost the war. 

Not only that, but Satan’s also extremely clever and cunning. Genesis 3:1 calls him “crafty.” And he’s had plenty of time to hone his skills down through the centuries. As they say, “practice makes perfect”—and Satan’s certainly had plenty of practice. So, he’s an opponent that we definitely don’t want to underestimate. Yet, one of the advantages we have against his methods is that he doesn’t really change them very much. He doesn’t need to, since they work so well. However, that also gives us an opportunity to study his methods and see how he works and prepare ourselves accordingly. Kind of like a football team will often watch videos of their opponents playing football in order to get a read on them and see what kind of plays they run, we also have an opportunity to do that with Satan’s methods that are recorded here in Genesis 3—because, again, he runs the same plays over and over and over again. He whispers the same kinds of lies into our ears, makes us the same empty promises, and leads us down the same path to misery and disaster. 

Now, to set the context here, God’s just created a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, and put them in a perfect paradise, called the Garden of Eden. And in this paradise, God showed his goodness to them by showering them with blessing on top of blessing. He provided everything they needed to be happy and whole and fulfilled. And, if you remember back to Genesis 2:16, God gave them only one command. He placed only one limitation on them. It says, And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The chapter then ended, in Genesis 2:25, with the man and woman being naked and not ashamed—a picture of their innocence in a world without sin. 

But all of that is about to change. Look at the first part of Genesis 3:1: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” As we’ll see, this isn’t just any serpent but a serpent who’s being controlled by Satan. Many other verses in the Bible, such as Revelation 12:9, make that clear. And it quickly becomes apparent in Genesis 3 that he’s up to no good. We read in the second part of verse 1 that, He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Now, what’s the serpent doing there? What’s he suggesting by that question? Well, he seems to be suggesting that God’s unreasonable and excessive in his requirements. Notice how the serpent’s question totally misrepresents what God said. In reality, God had said that any of the trees in the garden were fair game except for that one tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—but the serpent twists God’s words and exaggerates God’s requirement and asks, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Of course, the serpent cleverly phrases this in the form of a question, but it’s still pretty clear what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to plant seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind about the goodness and love of God. 

Then, continuing on to verses 2-3: 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” So, Eve corrects the serpent by rightly stating that God’s prohibition only applied to one of the trees, not all of them, but even Eve seems to exaggerate God’s command a bit. She says that God prohibited not only eating the fruit of the tree but also touching the tree, which wasn’t a part of God’s command as it’s recorded back in Genesis 2:16. So, either there’s a part of the command that wasn’t recorded, or Eve is embellishing things a bit and making it seem like God’s stricter than he actually is—perhaps because the serpent’s already beginning to have an influence on her.

Then, verses 4-5: 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So, there we have it. The serpent’s agenda is now out in the open. He’s progressed from a subtle attempt to get Eve to doubt God’s goodness to now engaging in an all-out assault on God’s goodness. At first, the serpent was simply asking a clever question, but now he’s telling a bald-faced lie. And that lie is that God’s deliberately holding out on Eve and keeping her from experiencing something wonderful. God knows, supposedly, that, by eating the fruit, Eve can obtain a level of enlightenment beyond her loftiest dreams and become “like God.” And God doesn’t want that, maybe because he feels threatened, and therefore selfishly insists that she not eat fruit from that tree. That’s the lie Satan tries to get Eve to buy into. 

And guess what? He’s still telling that same lie today. It has a few variations, but it’s the same basic lie. Actually, it’s a double lie—a lie that has two components. The first component is related to the consequences of sin and the second to the character of God. 

Regarding the first component, notice in the text how Satan explicitly tells Eve that her rebellion against God won’t have any negative consequence. He says in verse 4, “You will not surely die.” In other words, you can sin and get away with it. In fact, sin will make you happy. Your eyes will be opened. You’ll be like God. So, just like a fisherman will use a worm to hide his hook, Satan attempts to hide from us the consequences of sin and make it seem like sin is the most enjoyable thing in the world—certainly far more enjoyable than anything God’s allowed us to experience. And that gets into the second component of Satan’s lie, which is related to the character of God. Satan wants us to believe that God’s deliberately holding out on us and keeping us from experiencing incredible blessings because God’s not actually good or loving at all. Instead, he’s a power-hungry dictator or perhaps a cosmic killjoy who has no concern about our happiness or welfare. 

Yet, that’s the exact opposite of what the Bible tells us about God. In reality, God’s given us certain commands because he loves us and wants to protect us from harm. You know, when Becky and I moved into our house, one of the first things we did, since we have young kids, was put a fence up in the backyard. Our backyard is relatively flat until it suddenly drops off into a deep ravine. And, since we love our children, we didn’t want them falling down the steep hill into that ravine. So we put a fence up to keep that from happening. The purpose of that fence, of course, wasn’t to keep our children from something wonderful but rather to protect them from something dangerous. It was an expression of our love for them. Similarly, the Bible pictures God as a loving Father who’s built a fence to protect us from harm. And each one of his commands is like a picket in that fence. And we’re totally free to have fun and play games in the enormous yard he’s provided for us as long as we stay safely within the boundaries of that fence. Yet, Satan would have us believe much differently. He’d have us believe that the fence is actually more like a cage that’s designed to keep us from what’s enjoyable. God, therefore, plays the role not of a loving Father but of a cruel tyrant, according to Satan. 

So those are the two components of Satan’s lie, both of which are clearly visible here in Genesis 3. Satan hides the consequences of sin and impugns the character of God. And I’ll just say that if you buy into that false narrative, you’re done for. Whatever resistance or hesitation you might initially have had about crossing the line into sin will soon diminish, and it’s only a matter of time before you rush headlong into whatever sin Satan’s trying to get you to commit. The moment you buy Satan’s lie, it’s game over. So take a moment and think: where in your life right now has Satan successfully gotten you to believe that God’s holding out on you and that you therefore need to take things into your own hands in disobedience to God’s instructions? And as soon as you identify any area where that’s happened, you’ve gotta renounce the lie you’ve been led to believe.

Let me also take this opportunity to encourage you to learn from this exchange between Eve and the serpent here in Genesis 3 be ever so careful about the voices you allow into your life. What voices are you listening to? Some of the voices we listen to the most are those of our friends, which is why we need to be careful about the friendships we cultivate. As a theologian named J. C. Ryle wrote over 100 years ago, “I…advise you to be very careful in your choice of friends….You must remember, we are all creatures of imitation. Precept may teach us, but it is example that draws us. There is that in us all, that we are always disposed to catch the ways of those with whom we live, and the more we like them, the stronger does the disposition grow. Without our being aware of it, they influence our tastes and opinions; we gradually give up what they dislike and take up what they like in order to become closer friends with them. And, worst of all, we catch their ways in things that are wrong far quicker than in things that are right. Health, unfortunately, is not contagious, but disease is.” So, to a large degree, we’re a product of the friendships we make. If you want to know what someone will be like tomorrow, just look at their friendships today. 

Yet, our friends aren’t the only voices we hear on a daily basis—especially in this day and age. Nowadays, we also have to be mindful of the voices we allow into our lives through various media and forms of entertainment. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” Well, that’s very true when it comes to the entertainment we consume as well. And I’ll be direct with you: it seems like so much of what’s being put out nowadays is directly contrary what the Bible teaches as God’s will for us and the picture the Bible paints of “the good life.” And that shouldn’t surprise us, because we understand from Scripture that Satan’s actively at work in this world and very influential in the prevailing cultural mindset. 2 Corinthians 4:4 even calls Satan the “god of this world”—“god” being spelled with a lower-case “g.”

So, I don’t believe in drawing any legalistic boundaries or making hard-and-fast rules that go beyond what the Bible teaches, but I’ll just say that watching some of the movies and shows that are out there seems, to me, at least, and lot like….well, I’ll just say it…having your quiet time with Satan. There you go—I’m sure that’ll make for some interesting Community Group conversations. And that applies not to every show but definitely to some shows and probably to an increasing number of shows as our society continues its moral freefall. Brothers and sisters, having a 20-minute devotional time with God in the morning and then having a 2-hour devotional time with Satan in the evening isn’t going to shape you into a godly person. So, learn from Eve’s mistake in Genesis 3, and be very careful about what voices you allow into your life.  

Then, moving on to verse 6, we see Eve’s tragic decision unfolding in what feels like slow motion. Kind of like when someone’s falling and you can see it happening but you can’t react quickly enough do anything about it. That’s what verse 6 feels like. It says, “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 ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” And, with that, we see the main idea of this passage come into full view, which is that Satan persuades Eve to doubt God's goodness and consequently to rebel against God's authority. Satan persuades Eve to doubt God's goodness and consequently to rebel against God's authority. And the result is absolute disaster. As we’ll see more next week, this tragic decision right here is the beginning of every kind of suffering and hardship and evil in this world. 

And think about how heinous this sin is. Adam and Eve are rebelling against a God who’s shown nothing but goodness and love to them. In fact, they’re personally rejecting his rule over their lives. That’s what all sin is. It’s always personal. It’s a personal rejection of the God who made us and who loves us and who’s showered his blessings on us. 

Truth be told, we’re actually not even capable of understanding how heinous sin is—precisely because we’re sinful. Looking again to the writings of J. C. Ryle, he states, “I do not think, in the nature of things, that mortal man can at all realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin in the sight of [a] holy and perfect [God]….We…poor blind creatures…born in sin, surrounded by sinners, living in a constant atmosphere of weakness, infirmity and imperfection—can form none but the most inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil. We have no line to fathom it and no measure by which to gauge it….The very animals whose smell is most offensive to us have no idea that they are offensive and are not offensive to one another. [Likewise,] fallen men and women, I believe, can have no…idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of that God whose handiwork is absolutely perfect.” So, just like a foul-smelling farm animal isn’t able to smell its own stench, we aren’t able to conceive of how vile and heinous our sins are in the eyes of a holy God. 

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the Bible teaches that the penalty our sins deserve is eternal judgement. Just as we’d expect a human judge to uphold justice by punishing a violent criminal, God’s committed to upholding justice by punishing us. 

So, moving forward in our main passage, it’s with good reason that Adam and Eve experience shame for their sin. As we read in verse 7, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” So, for the first time, Adam and Eve feel shame. They’ve never experienced that before. But now, they feel a sense of shame for their sin, which manifests itself in a shame at their nakedness and causes them to try to cover their nakedness with loincloths of their own making. 

And, spiritually speaking, people are actually still trying to make loincloths for themselves today. You see, one of the things we possess, as people who are made in God’s image, is a conscience. And our conscience does what God designed it to do. It acts as a prosecuting attorney and convicts us of our sin. So, no matter how much we deny it, deep down, we know that we’re sinful. And, therefore, we experience shame and, like Adam and Eve, try to cover our shame with loincloths of our own making. Some people might do this by engaging in various religious rituals and acts of religious devotion. Others might do it by volunteering at various charities or contributing money to charitable causes. Still others might do it through political activism and their fight against various injustices that they believe exist in society. So there are many different ways in which people try to cover their moral nakedness, as it were, and placate their guilty conscience and, we might even say, atone for their sins. 

Yet, the Bible’s clear that all of these efforts are utterly insufficient. As Isaiah 64:6 says so well, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Think about that. Even our most “righteous deeds,” even the best things we do, are “like a polluted garment” and tainted by our sinful hearts. None of these loincloths we try to fabricate are sufficient to cover our moral nakedness or alleviate our shame. 

Yet, the good news of the gospel is that God does for us what we’re utterly helpless to do for ourselves. Back in Genesis 3 and actually looking ahead to verse 21, it says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” This verse is actually a part of the passage we’ll look at next week, but, taking a sneak peek at it today, we see that God himself provides the covering for Adam and Eve’s nakedness. In place of their pathetic loincloths, God provides for them “garments” that are sufficient to clothe them. And notice that these garments are made from animal skins, which means that animals had to die in order to furnish the garments. And so, for the first time in the Bible, we find an indication that our sins can only be covered through the shedding of blood. Later in the Old Testament, that theme would be further developed in the sacrificial system of the Law of Moses, featuring the sacrifice of animals to, in some symbolic sense, atone for the sins of God’s people. 

Yet, we see in the New Testament that none of these animal sacrifices could truly atone for sin. As Hebrews 10:4 says, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Instead, these sacrifices only provided a temporary covering. True atonement would only come through a perfect sacrifice—the sacrifice of God’s own Son. That’s why Jesus is identified in John 1:29 as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus died on the cross in order to take upon himself the punishment for our sins. We should have been the ones to suffer God’s judgment, but Jesus stood in our place and suffered that judgment on our behalf. Then, three days later, Jesus rose from the dead in order to demonstrate that the Father had indeed accepted his sacrifice as payment for sin. As a result, he now offers full forgiveness and cleansing to everyone who turns away from their sin and puts their trust in him. 

And that includes every single person here this morning. Maybe you’ve been carrying within you a deep sense of shame for something in particular that you’ve done in the past. Or maybe, you find yourself experiencing shame and aren’t even sure why. No matter what you do, though, you just can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. It just feels like you’re dirty and can’t seem to get clean no matter how much you try to wash yourself. Realize that that sense of shame you feel is actually a gift of God—because it functions as a constant reminder of your need for Jesus to rescue you from your sin. Just like a gas light on the notification panel of our car reminds us of our need to get more gas and just like physical pain alerts us to the fact that something’s damaging our bodies, God likewise gave us the capacity to experience shame so that we’d see our need for Jesus. So if you feel shame this morning for whatever reason, I can’t encourage you enough to run to Jesus and experience the cleansing and forgiveness and, in the imagery of Genesis 3, the covering that he offers. 

And as we think about the way God so graciously provided a covering for Adam and Eve, it’s striking to think of the sheer magnitude of his grace as we see it in this passage. In fact, let me briefly give you four realities of Adam and Eve’s situation here in Genesis 3 that contribute to our understanding of God’s grace and remind us of how marvelous his grace really is. First, the heinousness of Adam and Eve’s sin against such a good and holy God. Second, the judgment their sin deserved. Third, their utter helplessness to do anything about their situation. And fourth, the fact that God was under no obligation whatsoever to help them in any way. When you put all four of those things together, it becomes apparent just how amazing and astounding God’s grace really is. Just as the blackness of the night sky allows us to see the beauty of the stars, these four realities present in Genesis 3 form a backdrop that allows us to see the stunning beauty of God’s grace. 

Not only that, but get this: for those of us who are Christians, seeing the beauty of God’s grace in this way is the key overcoming the sinful tendencies that seek to reassert themselves in our lives. This is how we experience victory in our struggles with sin. 

You know, we’ve talked a lot about the spiritual war we’re in and the way Satan loves to entice us with sin, just as he did with Eve, and make sin seem so alluring and so desirable. Not only that, but one result of Adam and Eve’s rebellion is that the entire human race has a sinful nature—that is, a heart that’s inclined toward sin. And, even as Christians who have been given new hearts, the ghost of that old sinful nature still continues to exert its influence within us and, in our weaker moments, make us want to sin. 

Well, the way we overcome those sinful desires isn’t just by gritting our teeth and trying really hard. That never works for very long. Instead, if you want to overcome sin, that happens, first of all, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Romans 8:13 that it’s “by the Spirit” that we “put to death” our sinful desires and tendencies. Also, in Galatians 5:22, Paul refers to godly character traits as the “fruit of the Spirit.” But here’s a question: what specific ministry does the Spirit have in our lives that enables us to overcome sin? How exactly does he do that?

Well, I believe he opens our eyes to see the depth and magnitude of God’s grace that we’ve been talking about and enables us to see just how amazing and astounding that grace really is and then uses that to stir our affections for Jesus. And as our affections for Jesus are stirred, we come to delight in him and become so full of joy in him that sin no longer seems appealing. You know, when I’m full of a nice steak dinner, I’m no longer tempted to snack on stale potato chips. And when you’re full of joy and delight in Christ, you’re not tempted to fall into sin. So, all sin can basically be traced back to a failure to delight in Christ. That’s why we commit sins. Whenever we commit a sin, it’s because—in that moment—we’re not delighting in Christ. We’re sinning because we’re empty. 

Another way to think of it would be to picture yourself as a hot air balloon. How does a hot air balloon stay in the air? Well, through hot air, right? The hot air rises and lifts that balloon up. So if you’re a hot air balloon and you want to stay in the air and not go back down to the ground, you need to make sure that you have a steady supply of hot air. As long as you have a sufficient supply of that hot air, you’re good to go. And in the same way, as long as we’re delighting in Christ, we don’t have to worry about falling down into sin. The only time we’ll find ourselves sinking down into sin is if we’re empty of delight in Christ. 

So if you want to overcome sin and avoid falling into sin like Eve did in the garden, make sure you keep that balloon full—through prayer, through Bible reading, and through regular fellowship with other believers like we do in Community Groups. Those are all ways in which we’re regularly led to delight in Christ. Friends, you and I will always choose whatever our hearts desire the most. That’s just the way we’re wired. And so the only way overcome a particular sin is by acquiring greater affections for Jesus than you have for that sin. You can’t just stop the sin. You have to replace your affections for sin with affections for Jesus. So, as I once heard one pastor say, “Find the things that stir your affections for Christ and saturate your life in them. Find the things that rob you of that affection and walk away from them. That’s the Christian life as easy as I can explain it for you.”