Photo. Blick sr. Santa Cruz, CA. 2011

IX. The Sermon: Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve – Genesis 2-3 – Rev. Kyle McClellan, Senior Minister, Grace Presbyterian Church

Intro. Where does fear come from? That is a key question they have been wrestling with as a Midland University football team as Kyle has led the Chaplin services.

Genesis 3 is filled with tough yet good truths.

The Big Idea: When our first parents decided that God could not be trusted, and therefore did not need to be obeyed, their rebellion brought shame, fear and guilt into the world – a condition only God’s promised Son Jesus can remedy.

I. A lack of trust leads to a lack of obedience (3:1-6).

In Genesis 2, we see all things as good and going along very well! Chapter 3 Satan is introduced and misquotes God. God only had limits on one tree not all trees. Then Eve also misquotes God saying that they can’t even touch the fruit.

The sin is in believing that God is not trustworthy. He is not to be trusted. The sin is believing that God is a kill-joy and is holding the best of the garden away from Adam and Eve for himself. They are acting as though somehow God is holding out on them. Because they don’t trust him, they do not obey him.

II. Know the consequences of a failed coup.

A. Shame (2:28; 3:7). They sew loin clothes because they are ashamed of their nakedness, even though they we naked the day before.

B. Fear (3:10). We have not seen fear anywhere in scripture yet until this point in the quote by Adam.

C. Guilt (3:14-19). They are pronounce guilty and punished.

The guilt and shame and fear are in my life and each of our lives as it was in the garden. We are broken people. It is not just coach Sanduski that is broken – we all are. The shame and guilt of our first parents belong to us.

Is it a sin to be afraid? Fear is here because of sin. We know we will be afraid, but are we afraid of the right things? Are our fears ordered rightly?

So is that it? Our first parents sin and we have to be ruined with no hope?

III. Seek God’s remedy (3:15; cf.: 1 Corinthians 15:54-58).

In Gensis 3:15, it says that there is coming a human being who will reverse the effects and ruiness of the fall. All through the Bible we read and sit anxiously wondering if the new leader on the scene, like David the shepherd boy turned king for example, is the one to reverse what Satan has done. David was not nor anyone in the Old Testament , but they all pointed and foreshadowed Christ.

All that is broken is going to be fixed. Jesus is this guy. Not only is he the son of Adam but he is the son of God. The life he lived and the death he dies show us how to rightly order our fears.

In our New Testament reading of Jesus casting the demon out of the Gereseane demoniac, the people move from being afraid of this man to being afraid of Christ as they realize they are in the presence of God.

Paul in 1 Cor asks the question, where, o death, is your sting? Through Jesus we have this victory over shame, fear, and guilt.

What does it mean to experience victory? What does it mean to know first-hand to be on the winning side? It is good to cheer when the Huskers win and say that WE won, but we are not on that team and did not help them. However, how do we experience actually being on God’s team and experience this victory personally?

The books of our own life are filled with shame and fear and guilt. There are numerous pages in that book that show I did not trust God and instead believed he could not be trusted like Adam and Eve. I am separated from God, no longer able to be in his presence like Adam. But in Christ, my book is laid on Christ.

So where is your book? If its in your hand then, though you will have some good in your life thanks to common grace, you will never know the Father. Come and know personally the One who conquers your shame, and fear and guilt by his death for sinners!

The Sermon Passage: Genesis 2:25-3:24
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

3 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.

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But theLord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And 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 of 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 of 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 deceived me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the LordGod sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

1 Corinthians 54When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.