Genesis 3:1–21
This week’s message in our Foundations Series takes an interesting turn and you can see it right in the title chosen for the week, “The Foundation of Brokenness.” That sounds like a odd way to title a message but I am hoping that as we work through today’s passage you’ll understand more how this truly is one of the foundations of our faith.
We see things that are broken all the time but we rarely see brokenness as a good thing. I want to challenge that today, because Genesis 3 shows us that even when we break what God has made good, our brokenness can become the place where we recognize our need for redemption and discover that God has come looking for us.
To paint the picture of how brokenness can be a foundation I want you all to think about a time when you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom. It may have been at work, in a relationship or maybe even life in general where you made poor choices that left you in a place that you never thought you’d be. If we are willing to see ourselves back in that place that I am sure we all wish we could forget, we are given a gift to see something new in our lives; a bedrock that God can build upon.
As humans we have a propensity to forget things that are painful. We want to brush them aside and forget that they happened, but what if, just maybe, we took the time to see those areas of brokenness not as something to be ashamed of but rather as the place we had to arrive in order for God to make us into who He ultimately planned for us to be.
We are going to see that unfold today as we look into Genesis 3 which is where scripture records the Fall of Man and the entry of sin into the world. I would contend that no one knows what rock bottom feels like the way that Adam and Eve did in this story. Imagine having the blessing of communing with God personally and walking in the Garden of Eden with God Himself; only to make some poor choices that lead you to being separated from the Creator. I would contend that it didn’t have to happen; different choices could have been made and both Adam and Eve were both culpable in the situation, but nevertheless it happened and the first instances of a person feeling like they’ve hit rock bottom occurs in the most beautiful place on earth.
Who are you allowing to speak into your life?
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 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 middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not 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.”
Genesis 3:1-5
The story opens in a way that we’ve all heard a million times. The serpent shows up and talks to Eve in ways that in our modern way of thinking doesn’t even make sense.
Let’s start by saying the quiet thing out loud; how in the world did a serpent speak? Candidly we don’t know and we never will. There are some things in life that we have to accept as mysteries of faith because in the reality of life we cannot understand it all. Thay may not be the most comforting of thoughts but it is without a doubt the most honest.
I tend to agree with John Wesley’s interpretation of how this happened and it is that Satan may have acted through a real serpent. We know that in John 13:27 it says that at the Last Supper that Satan entered Judas and we also know that Mark 5:12-13 says that the demons asked Jesus to cast them out into the pigs. In both cases a living being was controlled by the supernatural and that is the most logical answer to an age old question.
In any event of how it happened two things remain. First, scripture doesn’t give us any reason to believe that Eve was surprised that the serpent would speak to her and in fact had an entire conversation; and second that she listened to someone who told her something different than God himself had said. That raises an important question for us as believers; who are we allowing to speak into our lives? In a world that seems to get noisier by the day we have to be on guard for voices that will take us away from the life that God has planned for us.
We also need to listen carefully to how that conversation happened. Satan never questioned what God had told Adam and Eve, he sowed doubt into her understanding of God’s word. That alone exposes something incredibly risky for us as believers and it gives us an example of just how Satan works.
We see this happen multiple times throughout scripture. Again and again Satan doesn’t come out blatantly and point out his goal; he’s earned the name “The Deceiver” for a reason. Look at Job, he didn’t say that Job didn’t honor God, he said that he only honored God because God was blessing him. When Christ was baptized and God said that Jesus was His Son in whom He was well pleased, Satan started two of the temptations by saying “If you are the Son of God.” God had just said Jesus was, that didn’t stop Satan from questioning it.
I’m sure that everyone has had times when they’ve questioned their faith, wondered if everything we believe as Christians is real and if any of this matters. When those questions come we have to be careful about how we respond to the internal challenges that naturally come to our faith. There will be seasons of doubt but that is why scripture tells us to hold fast to the faith but there is a difference between asking God an honest question and allowing a voice to teach us that God cannot be trusted.
We have to be careful because sometimes that voice comes from someone close to us. When we are hurt, they may be the person we turn to first and speak to us with the best of intentions, and what they say can help us see clearly or deepen the resentment we already feel. When we are making a difficult decision, they may remind us of what God has said, or tell us what we wanted to hear all along. That doesn’t mean we should surround ourselves only with people who agree with us and I’m in no way trying to equate anyone’s friends or loved ones with Satan. What I am trying to say is that we need to notice whose words we carry away from a conversation, especially when those words begin to change the way we see God.
That is what troubles me about the serpent’s question. Remember that last week we talked about how God had given Adam and Eve a garden full of trees to enjoy, but the serpent opens by talking as though God had forbidden them all. Then he tells Eve she will not die then he plants a seed that suggests that God is keeping something good from her. Before she reaches for the fruit, she is being asked to look at the God who has provided everything for her and wonder whether if He can be trusted.
That can happen to us slowly. A conversation can leave us a little less willing to pray, a little more certain that we know what is best, or a little more suspicious of the goodness of God. If that is happening, we need to pay attention to the voice we have allowed so close. Eve hears the serpent out, and in the next verse she looks at the tree again. Unfortunately we all already know what she sees there and her choices will tell us which voice she has begun to believe.
Whose voice will you believe?
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 loincloths for themselves.
Genesis 3:6–7
Adam and Eve act on the serpent’s version of what is good. They expect to gain something, but their first experience is shame. What happens when we trust another voice over the God who gave us life?
This may be the saddest verse in the entire bible. We have no indication to this point that Eve saw the garden as anything less than paradise. In the verses 1-5 we read that she understands that God has blessed them and given them all of the other trees and plants in the garden to eat from and these verses give us the picture that until this moment, when she allowed the serpent to speak into her, she hadn’t really even noticed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Verse 6 says that “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.” Don’t miss that last phrase, “was to be desired,” that’s written in the future tense. Up to this point she hadn’t desired the fruit of that tree at all; and yet because she chose to listen to a voice that she did not apply discernment to she found herself for the first time looking at God’s provision as less than complete.
I also want to point out something that I’ll admit I hadn’t noticed until studying for this week’s message. Bible scholars for centuries have debated if Eve had been told first hand by God that she was not to eat from the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or if she was told that information from Adam. Scripture doesn’t record God telling Eve, it only records God telling Adam. The interesting thing that we find if we slow down and read the passage directly, and do not apply our historical views from years of Sunday School and Vacation Bible School we will find a detail that so many overlook.
I’ve heard many say that the fall happened because Adam listened to his wife. The story is told almost as if Eve was convinced by Satan to partake of the fruit and then she went and found Adam and used this new found knowledge to repeat the sin of questioning God. The scripture doesn’t support that viewpoint. Verse 6 says, “she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” Adam was right there, it didn’t matter if God had told Eve directly or if she had been told by Adam, Adam had the opportunity to reinforce what God had spoken as His boundary and not only chose to be complicit but went one step forward and actually participated.
That adds a who new level of perspective on the situation and should be a warning to us today as believers. We have to be ready to speak up, and out, when things do not align with the direction we are given by God. Eve spoke up at first when the serpent called into question the boundary that God had placed on His creation but she gave into the pressure when the verbal assaults on her beliefs were repeated. When tested her trust in God’s provision wasn’t as deep as it could have been and as a result she was able to be pulled away from the relationship that God designed us for and as we saw in last week’s message, what God took the time to personally handcraft.
We also shouldn’t be focused solely on the mistakes of Eve in this story. As I mentioned, Adam was there in the moment while this was happening. So often when we hear the story of the Fall of Man we focus on Eve, her conversation with the serpent and that she gave the fruit of the tree to Adam almost as if she went off to find him to share just how great that fruit really was. That wasn’t the case. Even when you go all the way back to the original Hebrew it says that Adam was “immah”, with her. He was right there. He saw his wife be deceived and did nothing about it. Even worse, when she encouraged him to also disregard the instructions of the Lord it makes no mention of Adam protesting or pushing back. The scripture says simply “and he ate.”
We need to be careful about who we allow to speak into our lives. Adam and Eve were at the pinnacle of relationship with God Himself. He came to the garden and walked with them and was in true communion with the humans He created. They had unobstructed access to talk to God and how easily it would have been to pause, to talk to God, to ask for wisdom and clarification. Unfortunately they chose differently, they chose to obtain wisdom through their own means and wisdom outside of God’s provision will always be incomplete.
What do you do after you fall?
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”
Genesis 3:7–13
Unfortunately things do not get better for Adam and Eve. Instead of coming to God honestly, admitting their failures and confessing the first sin of mankind they decide to double down and shift the blame away from themselves.
I want to take these out of order on purpose and hopefully in a moment the reason will become clear. Eve, when questioned by God about what she had done decides to do what so many of us are guilty of ourselves; she blames the someone else. Essentially what she is saying to God is that if the serpent hadn’t talked to her and convinced her that God’s provision was less than sufficient she would have never made the choice that she made. The fallacy of that decision is easy to spot, in fact some basic questions change the entire situation. If you notice, when Eve was originally questioned by the serpent she didn’t start her response with a recounting of all the blessings she had already been given by God, she started by restating the rules she was given.
This points out two things to us.
First, while humans at this point did not have the knowledge of good and evil, they did have the awareness of right and wrong. Eve knew the boundary that God had placed upon them and could easily recite it when questioned. The head knowledge that she had was strong and when asked a basic question she could easily give the basic answer. Eve’s challenge came when the question got harder; and that is why she use the words “tricked me.” Have you ever found yourself in a place where someone is questioning your faith and you feel over your head; good news that happened to the very first woman God ever created. That tells us that not knowing every answer like a seasoned apologist or defender of the faith isn’t a shortcoming, the short coming came from not standing firm regardless of the questions posed.
When questioned by God Eve points back to the other person and paints herself as complicit in the situation. Almost as if God hadn’t allowed the serpent to speak to her in the first place that she would not have made the decision in the first place. Eve’s response puts us on guard to be careful to not place the burden of our sin on another. Our choices are our choices and we need to own them. I have told my daughter’s for years that “they are not responsible for other people’s actions but they are responsible for their reactions.” That’s what Eve is teaching us here. We are not responsible for the decisions and actions of others but we are responsible for our decisions and actions.
We also however cannot have an honest review of this story without paying attention to Adam. Adam’s shortcomings in this situation are in vast supply. He’s there when his wife is being pressured by the serpent to question the Word of God and doesn’t speak truth over her. He’s there and watches her reach out and take the fruit from the tree without stopping her. He watches her eat the fruit that God had told Adam was forbidden and didn’t remind her of God’s blessing.
I believe this is a call to all of us as believers. Hebrews 3:13 says “You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.” That is a pretty direct call to action for all of us but it holds even deeper meaning when we realize that the passage in Hebrews is calling back to Psalm 95 where it says “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Psalm 95 is calling people to remember the years that Isreal in the wilderness after being freed from slavery in Egypt. Over the 40 years in the wilderness they had time after time seen God’s provision and yet just as consistent as God’s blessing on them was their continual unfaithfulness to the same God who was providing them with manna each morning.
Each of us has seen God provide richly for our lives and for the lives of those around us and in essence, if we are willing to see it through this lens, He is continuing to build each of us our own personal Garden of Eden. He has provided the homes, loved ones, passions and joys that are as unique as we are and yet we can find ourselves questioning the very goodness of the God who has blessed us so richly.
This is where we come in as fellow believers. We need to be bold enough to step in when we see someone struggling and confident enough to speak up when we hear someone being drawn away from their faith. Adam’s failures in this story were many, and we could spend hours talking about them alone, but this morning I want us to pay attention to the care that he did not provide to Eve. What would have been different if Adam had not allowed Eve to be convinced to question God in that moment?
I also want to point out that had Adam intervened in this moment and the outcome had been different I am confident that Satan would have returned to try again. I point that out because being willing to be the voice in other people’s lives is not a one time event. We need to be willing to stand up as often as necessary to ensure that no one falls away from their faith.
I also want to be incredibly honest here; being willing to speak up will not be easy, it will be hard and it may cost you a relationship. I know that personally I have done this and ultimately the outcome was a slow drift in the relationship I had with that friend. He was spending time with someone that was drawing him away from his first love and I felt God telling me to say something. After several weeks of refusing to say something I finally got the courage to point out what God was laying on my heart to share and it wasn’t well received. We remained friends and continued spending time together but slowly over time our relationship changed and choices had to be made.
I may never know where that friend continues on with their faith in Christ, but I do know that I can say with conviction that I lived out Hebrews 3:13 with integrity and that is all God is calling each of us to do.
Conclusion
God’s question to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?” brings us back to the voices we have been listening to throughout this story. Adam and Eve believed the serpent when he questioned God’s goodness, and after they ate, shame told them to hide. Yet when they heard God coming through the garden, He called out to them. Adam and Eve had broken the trust they shared with God, but He still came looking for them.
God knew what had happened. He knew about the fruit, the hiding, and the blame that followed, yet He still asked them questions and gave them the opportunity to tell Him the truth. What is even more comforting, after everything that had changed, God continued showing His love and care for them when made clothing for them before they left the garden. He did not pretend their sin had no consequences, but He continued to care for the people He had made.
I wonder how many of us have spent time hiding from God because we believed He would want nothing to do with us if He knew what we had done. We may be able to keep parts of our lives hidden from other people, but God already knows us fully. His call to come out of hiding is an invitation to be honest with Him, to confess the choices we have made and the times we have doubted His goodness. We can answer Him when He calls our name because His grace reaches toward us before we have found the words.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, I want to call us to remember how far that love was willing to go. Jesus took our sin upon Himself and gave His life on the cross so that we could be forgiven and brought back into relationship with God. When He told His disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He gave us a way to remember the sacrifice that made our return possible. The bread and the cup bring us face to face with the cost of our sin, but they also assure us that Christ has met us with mercy.
So, before we come forward to take in the Lord’s table let’s take a moment to prepare our hearts. Let’s remember the God who called out to Adam and Eve in the garden and remember the Savior who gave His life for you. Let’s confess the moments we’ve failed to live as God has called us to live and to remember that whatever you have been carrying, you do not need to hide it from Him. Then, let’s come honestly and receive the grace Christ offers listening once more for the voice of the One who has been calling you back.
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