We turn now in the Holy Scriptures to our second reading, which this morning is Genesis chapter three, beginning in verse six and reading to verse 24. You'll note that we've been in Genesis 1 through 3 for a while now, and my intentions this morning are to close the chapter, as it were, at least in this sermon series, and move towards Genesis 4 next week. But there's so much here, and we weren't able to do a broad sweep of Genesis 3, so now we turn to that. Genesis 3, beginning in verse 6, I invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's inspired word. 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. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 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. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. 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. 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. 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. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain shall you bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. 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. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. 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. The man called his wife's name Eve. because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us and knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach 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 work the ground from which he has taken. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, for the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Sometimes, We don't appreciate what we have until we lose it. And that's certainly true with paradise. Paradise in the garden. Oh, what we had. Oh, what humanity held. Think about it for a moment. What did Adam and Eve have that now, at least in one sense, is lost? fellowship they had with God, the walking with him in the garden, the promise of life held forth to them, the trees they had to eat, the world which was sinless and innocent. Everything calibrated and what was held before them, but joy and peace and life everlasting, nothing but upward and onward to greater heights and glory and all of this theirs. And what happened? They lost it. Slipped right through their fingers. We can put it more intentionally than that. They lost it as they took hold of that fruit. It didn't just slip through their fingers. They grabbed a hold of sin. And in grabbing hold of sin, they lost paradise. Paradise Lost, of course, that's the title of a John Milton work, but it's a good placeholder for the whole chapter of Genesis 3. Paradise, paradise, a beautiful garden, and life with God everlasting, and with one another in perfect peace, and all of this lost. It reminds me of a Frank Sinatra song. I've quoted Frank Sinatra a few times this past month. I'll take a break, I promise, after this. Whenever Natalie hears me playing the song, she says, I don't like that one. That's a sad one. But I like how it's bittersweet and really just puts words. I can almost picture Adam singing this. Over and over, I keep going over the world we knew once when you walked beside me. That inconceivable, that unbelievable world we knew when we two were in love. and every bright neon sign turned into stars, and the sun and the moon seemed to be ours. Each road that we took turned into gold, but the dream was too much for you to hold. You see, can't you almost picture Adam saying that over and over? I keep going over the world we knew. And of course, Sinatra has this romance in mind, but we can think of this and think of the garden and all that humanity had and all that we've lost. and the pain that pierces through our human experience now. And the loss robs us of happiness, joy. Sin has stolen paradise from us. And yet, we see in this passage that God preserves his promise of paradise through his perfect sacrifice. Sin steals, God preserves. That's what we see when we look at the big picture of Genesis chapter three. You cannot miss the loss and the cursedness that pierces into human existence. And yet you cannot miss these hints dropped throughout the chapter that we're going to see where God says, it is not all lost. I've kept it for you. There's a way to get it back. In fact, there's a way to have even better. Three words going to guide us through Genesis chapter three, separation, frustration, preservation. and the separation that comes immediately into the garden we see. You see, you read this, you read Genesis chapter 3, you remember Genesis chapter 2, didn't God say that as soon in the day that they ate that fruit, in that day they would die? So where's the death? They're still running around the garden. I mean, they're running around sowing fig leaves together and hiding behind trees, but aren't they supposed to be dead? And the answer is what? They did die. Many, many a scholar will try to take this to you and undermine your confidence in Scripture, saying, there's a contradiction here. They were supposed to die and they didn't. Don't you understand that what happened to Adam and Eve, the millisecond that they sinned and took of the fruit, they died. They died spiritually right away. And you see that dawn on them as they start to be separated from God, from one another. And then begins the slow and steady process of physical death, their bodies falling apart until to dust they return. It all started, yes, in the very day in which they took. And it starts not with physical death, not with the physical act of dying, but with separation from God. First and foremost, do you know this? That sin, the worst thing it does, the worst thing that disobedience to God does is it separates us from God. We were made. for uninterrupted fellowship with our maker. And you see that God comes walking in the cool of the day. This is something that the scriptures, the very Hebrew of this passage show us is something that God habitually did. This is what God would do. He would walk with Adam and Eve in the garden, walking in the presence of their creator. It's a magnificent thing. And yet this time he comes walking and what do they do? They go hiding. Kids, this shouldn't be too foreign to you. You know that when you've done something wrong and you hear mom and dad yell or mom or dad yelling your name, what do you want to do? Go hide. I remember that, you know, my mom found that I'd drawn with crayons on the wall. You know, you're not supposed to do that. Right. Not OK. When I when I draw, she found I'd drawn on crayons on the wall. Tyler Charles Dietrich. And I would hear that that name called and I would, you know, I'd be hiding under the couch. That's what Adam and Eve are doing here. They know they're guilty. And so now they'd rather hide from God than seek Him. They'd rather hide from God than walk with Him. That's what sin does to us. It pronounces us guilty, stained. And guilty before whom? Before God. That's why we hide from him. That's why in our sin, if we want nothing to do with God, we want to get as far away as we can from him. If we could, we'd like Jonah, jump on a ship and flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. And of course, it's foolish, isn't it? You can't hide from God. And yet that's the foolishness of sin. It says, I got to get away from him. I know he's perfect. I know he's holy. I know he's righteous. I know his standard. He's the creator. and sin says, oh, if I could just flee from him, then this gnawing feeling of guilt, maybe then it would leave me. Maybe I wouldn't have to think over and over again. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Romans chapter three tells us, None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks God. You see what the scriptures are saying? This is what sin does to us. This is part of what we call total depravity. We know that sin is like a poison that has corrupted and infected us, and it's spread to every part of us. There's no part of us that is free of the stain of sin. There's no part of us that can be called not guilty. And so no one seeks God. No one comes running before God in their own strength and says, I've messed up, I want to make this right. In sin, we flee, we run, we hide anywhere we can go to pretend that we can get away from God. We imagine that somehow we can cover our shame. Do you notice that? What Adam and Eve do? They start right away, they realize they're naked, they realize that nakedness now, after sin, is associated with shame. Not innocence, but now shame. And they start putting clothes together. But what are these clothes? Little fig leaves from leaves they found in the garden. It's a shameful and sad image as they're rushing to try to cover themselves. As if God will look at them and say, would miss what's obviously there. We do this too. We know we're guilty. We can pretend that we're not. We can act like we can hide from God. But the reality is that we pretend that somehow our good works can save us. And so we invent religions of our own making that try to cover the shame of our sin. Praying, rule following, performing rituals, child sacrifice, ancient and modern, whatever it is. We come up with it and think that somehow it can atone, somehow it can cover. Somehow when the creator of the universe looks at us, he'll say, all right, I guess you took care of that sin problem. I guess the guilt's not there anymore. It's foolish. The truth is that none of this can cover our sin. No amount of charity, no amount of good works, No amount of desperate pleading or self-harm can make us right with God. And yet we see religion after religion attempt this in different times and in different ways. We know something is wrong with us. We know that we are sinners. We know that we can't get away from that. And so sometimes we turn to self-harm or sometimes we pretend We pretend. The truth is that none of this can cover our sin. None of this can fix our relationship with a perfect and a holy God. Our best efforts are flimsy fig leaves that fool no one when it really gets down to it. The scripture says that even our best works are filthy rags. The Lord sees. And then when the Lord confronts us, we play the blame game instead of confessing the truth, just like Adam and Eve. You noticing that Adam and Eve's sin is a paradigm for what we do and their response is what we do today. Right away, the blame game starts coming, right? God says, Adam, why are you hiding? He goes, I knew you were you'd see me and I knew that you'd see that I'm naked. And God said, who told you you're naked? Did you sin? And Adam says, The woman who you gave me, she's responsible. Do you see what's so horrible about what Adam's doing there? It's bad enough to blame his wife when really he's the responsible leader of his family. Do you know what's even worse? He's not blaming his wife, he's blaming God. The woman who you gave me, God, it's your fault. If you hadn't given her to me, if you hadn't given me this flawed helper, then I wouldn't be in this situation. What a miserable thing to say. And yet this is ultimately what happens over and over again today. Victimhood and blame shifting are the typical tactics of guilty sinners then and now. God, why did you make me this way? God, it's your fault I keep falling into sin. If you didn't make me with such strong desires, then I wouldn't be so tempted. God. You've made this awfully hard for me, haven't you? I guess I'll just have to give in. Have you ever said anything like that? Even the most subtle form? James, in the epistle of James, it says that it's possible, very possible for human beings to blame God and say, you've tempted me. And yet James says we should never point fingers at God and say you're tempting me. The reality, quite simply. is that the responsibility rests on us, then and now. We can never say, Lord, you've put me in this place where sin is inevitable, and so I'm just going to go in. That is a foolish and wicked argument. And you know what it ultimately is? It's just another flimsy fig leaf trying to take the blame off of us and put it on the good and generous creator of the universe. Is there Any surprise that with these kind of tactics that sin brings out of our hearts, that our situation with God is defined by separation, eternal separation from God. There should be no surprise that what happened in paradise was a great divorce. You could imagine a chasm that separates us from God. And that chasm is wide, so wide that nothing from man's side can cross it. Separation. But then frustration, we see this in Genesis 3. Sin leaves us guilty and stained, but it also leaves us frustrated with our human experience. And this is something we need to recognize, that we are at the very same time sinners and sufferers. So that you can never look at someone and the only thing you say to them is, you sinner, You also must look at them not just with concern that they would repent, but also with a deep sympathy that they are suffering under the weight of a cursed world. We always look at an individual, and if we're going to counsel them, if we're going to care for them, we must call them to repentance where their sin, but we also must sympathize with them and say, it is hard to live in a fallen world. The curse hurts, doesn't it? The curse stings. And that suffering is most obvious in the specific ways in which we are most human. Notice when God brings out the curses first to the serpent, we talked about that last week, but now we're focusing in on the curse upon the woman and the curse upon man. What does he bring out? He brings out their gender distinctives and he brings out those distinctives just at the very places where they are most different from one another and most dignified in being different from one another. With woman, the experience of a cursed world plays itself out in several dimensions, but one of them, the obvious one, is childbearing. And think with me about this for a moment. This is supposed to be, in many ways still is, the most joyful area of female life. The miraculous birth of a baby. If you've ever seen it, if you've ever heard the first cry of a baby, you know exactly what I mean. It is a miracle. It is, it's incredible. And yet it is now marked by deep physical pain. Some of you ladies are thinking, Pastor, you don't know the half of it. In fact, there's a member of my extended family. She told the story that when she was giving birth, she grabbed onto the doctor's tie and said, get me the epidural man now. Get him right now. It's that kind of pain. Not from experience, but I'm told. And yet we need to see this. I need to say this quite seriously, that the pain of childbearing continues. after birth, as mothers raise their kids in a broken world, in a world under the weight of the curse, a mother pours her very heart into her little ones only to see them suffer the attacks of a wicked world or taken from her too soon. We see it with Eve. Genesis chapter four, such hope in her heart as she sees Cain and Abel born and what happens. Abel robbed from her too soon by the seed of the serpent. You know who else knew this kind of pain of a cursed world? Mary. Mary was told that the savior of the human race was going to be her offspring. And yet she was told a sword will pierce your heart. What was that sword? She saw what no mother should have to see. Her dear boy dying on the cross, taken from her too soon. And many in our own church know this pain. The pain of a piercing sword to a mother's heart. This should not be so. This should not be so. And a woman's relationship with her husband We're told in this passage provides little relief since it's cursed with a bitter battle of the sexes. It says that woman looks to her husband. Now she looks to him. Our passage says to seek to control him, to seek to grab a hold of his leadership. And yet it says that he will rule over her. What's being implied here? That now this dynamic where you have, wife is given as a helper to man, and man is supposed to be a loving leader, and suddenly she is grasping at power, grasping at control, and man is wielding it over her as like a bludgeon. And this is of course typical of the many marriage struggles. It defines probably what? Probably 90% of the marriage problems that come into any counselor's office. the difficulty of husband and wife relating to one another as dignified helper and loving leader. Man's work is cursed too. Did you notice this? Providing for his family is no longer a joy, now it's a hardship. And we see that in the curse. Because you have listened to your wife, Adam, 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. You see, what is most basic about a man's responsibility? Well, it's providing for his family. It's leading his family well with the work that God has put On his plate, the different giftings he's equipped man with, he's supposed to take that and use it to pour blessings into his family. And now what? It feels like the world is against him. Now it's two hours into the workday and man's yawning. He's bored because he's tired. His back hurts. Body doesn't work like it used to. Feels like everything is breaking down. Indeed, everything is breaking down. Earth has become an obstacle to his failing body. And in the end, he returns to the dust. And within a few generations, his name is forgotten. It's toil. This is a life of toil. As Ecclesiastes 2 says, all this work, all this work is vanity, vanity, vanity. I've told you before, nowhere has this been more evident to me than the men that I've met in nursing homes. I've been to many nursing homes over the years. Many a time I've talked with a man who said, let me show you why my life is worth something. Look at all these pictures of the cars that I fixed over the course of my life. Look at the carpentry that I, look at all these wood carvings that I made. And I can see in their eyes this desperation. They're saying, please tell me that my life was worth something. Tell me that all the work I did, the hobbies I poured my heart into, tell me they had meaning. Tell me that my family's gonna remember me. Tell me that my name will live on. And yet all I have to give to that kind of hope is, brother, your name very well might be forgotten within a few generations. And the gravestone that bears your name might not even be legible. Toil, toil, toil, vanity, vanity, vanity. This is paradise lost. Is paradise lost forever? No. There is no way for mankind to recover what sin has stolen. That gate is closed. It's closed and guarded by a flaming sword. Wherever Eden is, wherever paradise is, you won't be able to find it on a map and you won't be able to take your next vacation there. So cancel the flights if you think you're gonna get in. but God in his mercy has provided a way to preserve paradise. God preserves life. And you see this right away, right? You say, why isn't he annihilating them? Why isn't he destroying them? Because he is holding forth this hope. And Adam seems to grab ahold of that hope when he names Eve. He has faith in God through the way he names Eve. What does he call her? He says, I'm gonna call my wife Eve because she's the mother of all living. She's the mother of all living. You know what this day means? It means that the curse has not brought a complete end to humanity. Instead, there is still a future and a hope for men and for women. And where is that? Where does Adam get that hope from? Where would he pick up on this idea that there's hope through woman? Genesis 315. the hope of a head crusher who would deal a death blow to Satan and to his schemes and to the death that he's brought into the world. And so Adam says, I'm gonna call her Eve because there is life that is going to come through her. This is not the end, but she's the mother of all living. And you know that the scriptures speak of God as the God, not of the dead, but of the living. This is a true hope. It's a hope in seed form. It's a hope held out saying, where's this going to go? Where's this going to come from? But we see the scriptures unfold this where indeed Eve is the mother of all living because she gives birth, well, to a son, who had a son, who had a son, who had a son, who had a son, who had a son, who eventually brings forth Jesus, the Savior of the world. The seed of the woman who truly crushed the serpent. Right there, in the midst of Eve's curse, immediately after that, what are we told? that the curse does not have a final word, but the life that comes through her son. And that descendant, that son I'm talking about is Jesus. We have that hope too. You know, there's this phrase in 1 Timothy 2.15, right? It's talking about women in that passage. And there's been this phrase I've never really understood, but I think I get it now. It's talking about woman and it's talking about how she ate and was deceived. But then it says something, it says, but she will be saved through her childbearing. What? What does that mean? You're going to be saved through your childbearing. I think what it means, first of all. It first applies to Eve. She sinned, shame into the world. And yet her offspring. Mary's offspring. would come to save the world. And now this promise applies not just to Mary and Eve, but to our children who are raised as disciples of our Savior. What I mean is this, the hope of the world is the hope of the head crusher and his team. the hope of children born who will trample over the evil one. And let me say this, because this week we've suffered the tragedy of one who was taken from us too soon, and yet even he is trampling now over the head of the serpent. Because death does not have the final word for him. Saved through childbearing. It means that the hope of the world rests in Christ and his team that he has pulled around himself and the feet that are trampling over the evil one. Death does not have the final word. Resurrection life does. How will God restore what's broken? He will preserve human life through the seed of the woman and through a sacrifice. In verse 21, did you notice this? Look at this. What does God do? Right after the curse, the first thing he does is he makes garments of skins and clothed them. He clothes humanity with robes from a slain animal. Do you see that this is the gospel in the book of Genesis? Do you see it? What did we do in sin and shame? We pulled together fig leaves. We tried to cover ourselves with our good works, with our feeble and failing attempts to make something of ourselves. But what did God do? God said, stop that. Stop that. Let me clothe you. Let me clothe you with grace-filled garments, the garments that come to you through a sacrifice. And what this reminds us is that sin is so real and evil that no cheap fix can deal with the problem of sin. No cheap fix. And yet God himself provides a permanent solution. It means it's the gospel. Your sin is far more serious than you imagined it to be. And yet God's grace is far more deep and beautiful than you imagined it would be. The permanent solution is the innocent sacrifice of the lamb of God. slain for the sins of the world, dying in your place and clothing us with his own righteousness. Philippians 3.8, what do we have? A righteousness that is not our own, but that which comes through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Beautiful garments, garments of a sacrifice. Garments of our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the hope in the face of paradise lost. that our Savior has provided a way for us to have paradise once again. Not Eden, but something even better. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so very much for hope in the face of incredible loss. what sin has stolen, the years that it's robbed of us, the miseries that it's heaped on us. And Lord, yes, ultimately because of our complicity in all this, you have not left us to this. You have had compassion on sinners who are also sufferers, and you've given us relief. We experience that relief even now as the hope of life over death comes to us in the gift of Christ Jesus, in the gift of the offspring of the woman. And then, Lord, comes to us in the gift of his perfect sacrifice. We ask, Lord, that you would come quickly and bring to us that full pledge of gospel life. where there will be no more tears, no more suffering, no more curse, but only joy in your life-giving presence. We thank you for the pledge of that now. Would you come quickly and bring Lord the fullness of that soon. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.