Transcript for:
Consequences of Sin and Redemption

  • Today the lesson today entitled Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost. Okay, so we're studying the results of sin, the consequences of the disobedience first by Eve, of course, and then by Adam. And last week, very briefly we numbered five main consequences of sin. Go over those very briefly with you. The first of which was shame. Adam and Eve felt shame for their disobedience. And that shame for since is experienced today. The legacy of that shame experienced today in the form of nakedness. Our nakedness reminds us of sin and sin makes us feel ashamed. It's kind of a residual thing that remains in our psyche, if you will. One of the reasons why in marriage they say they were naked and they were not ashamed. In marriage, the idea of intimacy in marriage because God has created marriage, He enables us to be naked and without shame and to be transparent and open with our partner, wherein we could not be that way with a stranger. And so, that's a kind of legacy of that. Another consequence of sin was guilt, of course. They knew that they did wrong, and they felt guilty about it. There's no way around it. We're hardwired. You go to any kind of remote tribal area in some jungle somewhere, and stealing somebody else's whatever, tools or knife or something, creates a certain amount of guilt, it's universal. We're hardwired in the sense that we know intuitively that there's some things we ought to do and some things we ought not to do. And that is, the guilt of course is the result of sin. Thirdly, fear, they felt fear. If you add shame and guilt and you put those things together, they lead to fear. Fear of punishment that they know they deserve. We call it the sense of dread, the sense of dread. Even little children who don't have a very sharply tuned sense of law and right and wrong, and so on and so forth. Even if they do something, you ever notice, they go into the cookie jar before supper. They do something, they'll stop and kind of look around because they realize, uh-oh, there's something I'm doing that's not okay. And the fear, the tingling there is the dread that comes from knowing there's punishment that comes for it. So they had a sense of fear because they knew they had disobeyed. More sin, of course, their original disobedience led them to increased sin. They denied that they were responsible. They accused each other, they accused God. And in the end, of course, even blamed God for having put them in a situation where they sinned. So sin just leads to more sin. And then of course judgment itself. Eventually all sin is judged by God. And so, Satan and Eve received the judgment by God. And that's the comfort. Some people say, why is it that bad things happen to good people and little children? Little children never did anything wrong. In some country where these crazy people come and they kill and they rape and they burn the town down, just for power or gold or diamonds or something like that. And innocent children are harmed and so on and so forth. And so many people give up believing in God because they just can't reconcile a good God allowing something like that to happen. And we recognize that God also man to exercise his free will for evil or for good. And He allows him to do that, and the consequences of that many times are the suffering of innocent, especially children. But we must also remember the judgment. We must always remember the judgment. The evil that is done is temporary here because we are temporary. Someone's life who may have been 50 years or 60 years or maybe 100 years at most will be cut short to two years or five years or 15 years. Yes, that's true, there's a certain injustice. But the judgment that's coming will make that right. The judgment that's coming will be final. So the damage done will be judged. There will be justice for those things. And so, when you're praying and when you see these terrible things happening in the world and you're praying and you feel helpless, can we save all the poor children in Haiti? Can we help all the poor children in the Republic of Congo, or wherever they're having wars? Can we save all of them? No, we can't, but in our prayers for them, we can cry out to God for justice. And we can be sure that God will, He will exercise justice with those who are guilty of harming the innocent and disobeying Him. And how do we know that? Because He judged Adam and Eve, His own creation. He judged them immediately for their disobedience. So what's the judgment, what happened as far as Adam and Eve is concerned? Well, first Satan was condemned. And his bid to overpower humanity was denied by the promise that God would send a Savior who would ultimately destroy him. The game is over in Genesis. I don't know if you realized that. The game is over, Satan makes his bid to overpower mankind in some way. And God judges him immediately, so his game is over right at the beginning, it's all epilogue after that. After Genesis 3, it's the epilogue all the way. So then what happened? All right. Note also that Satan's defeat is outlined and promised at the very beginning of the Bible and then it's confirmed at the end in the book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation, you get a clear description of how God has judged and will judge the finality of Satan's work on Earth. Eve, of course, she's also judged. Her birthing experience would not be a justify reproduction of generations into a perfect world, but rather a painful experience of reproduction and bringing children into a troubled world. How many times have you heard people say, I don't know if we want to have children? I don't know if I want to bring children into such a dysfunctional world, such a cruel and evil world. I've heard people say that. I I've known people who have not had children because of that. But we have children and we'll kind of note a little later on here in the text because we have faith, we have faith. And we put them in God's hands, our children. And then also, as far as Eve is concerned, I'm just reviewing from last time, Eve would also love, excuse me, Eve would also lose her corulership position with man and become in is submission to her husband. Because when Adam and Eve are created, they are corulers. When Adam and Eve are created, Eve is not in submission to Adam, that's not how it works. She is suitable for him, she completes him. Remember, we said the savior help meet. It's not a help meet, it's a help meet for him. And that Hebrew word, among other things, meant savior. So Eve was a savior to Adam. What was she saving him from? She was saving him from loneliness. He was alone, he recognized, I'm alone. Everything else is in couple and pairs, animals, and so and so, I, there's nothing for me. And so, Eve saves him from loneliness, completes him. That's the role at the beginning, a complete snap unit. But after sin, God then has to impose some kind of order in order to stop the chaos that would ultimately happen in the family, and so, part of Eve's judgment is she loses her corulership position with man and becomes in submission to her husband. And yet, the passage says, in His mercy, God grants that these two effects, the fact that she would bring children through pain into a troubled world. The fact that she would be in submission to her husband, God nevertheless gives her the character and the spirit that she will still be able to love her husband and love her children despite these difficulties. I think we talked about it a couple lessons back. If it were not so, every family would only have just one child. There wouldn't be a second child once a woman realized how painful it is to have a second child, and so on and so forth. So we talked a lot about this in the last lesson. I don't want to go over this. So, now God turns to Adam. I'm just going through this, first Satan is judged, then Eve is judged. By order of appearance, the snake shows up, he gets his judgment first. Eve disobeys, she gets her judgment. Now we move onto man, to Adam. So let's read verse 17. It says, "Then to Adam, rather, he said because you have "listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten "from the tree about which I commanded you saying, "you shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground "because of you. "In toil you will eat of it all the days of her life. "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you. "And you will eat the plants of the field. "By the sweat of your face, you will eat bread "until you return to the ground because from it "you were taken because you are dust "and to dust you shall return." So first God outlines the sin of Adam. First of all, he says, "You listen to your wife." Now, it's okay to listen to your wife. I listen to my wife many times. I've learned the important lesson that if I ignore what she says, it's usually not a good thing because she has some very good advice to give me. But in this case, he listened to his wife instead of listening to the word of God. So what he did is he changed his allegiance. His allegiance was to be to God's word. And instead, notice how Moses writes it. He says, you listened to the voice of your wife. You didn't listen to the voice of God. You listened to the voice of your wife. So you chose her allegiance over me. So loyalty to the word is stronger than any human tie, including marriage. What do you think Jesus is talking about? He says, "If anybody tries to come before Me." What does He mean? Well, if somebody tells you, look put Jesus aside and just come with me. He said you oughta hate the person that tries to do that to you because that person's trying to lead you to a point where you're gonna lose your soul. Loyalty to the word stronger than any human tie, including marriage. Eve did not deceive him. Notice she didn't deceive him, she convinced him. Eve was deceived, but it never says that Adam was deceived. He was not deceived in any way, shape, or form. I mean, what are the arguments? Well, what harm can it do? Or only this one time, and look, I tried it. Nothing happened, I'm good. So in the end, the plain truth is that he did what God said not to do. And it's like God is the parent here. Haven't you said exactly the same thing to your own kid? I thought I told you not to go under the sink in the cupboard there because the soap and the chemicals are there. Didn't hear what I said? That's to the three or four-year-old. And then to the 15 or 16-year-old, didn't I tell you not to take the car? Didn't I tell you I needed the car and you were not to take the car with your friends? Or didn't I tell you you were not to ride around with more than one person in the car? And so and so saw you driving down Main Street with four kids in the back and two kids in the front. Didn't I tell you? God says to Adam, didn't I tell you not to eat the fruit? What was it about that command that wasn't clear? So for parents, don't be discouraged. Even God had to say to His creations the same problem. So then God pronounces the judgment on Adam, which is very severe. Some people think, wow, woman, she really, but man, he also bears a judgment. He says since he is the head of the race, the judgment is by extension going to effect all of his descendants. Not just you Adam, but all your descendants are going to suffer. And again, if you want to make a little extension to your own family. Okay, well, you can't have the car. And you and your brother, we're gonna go to the ball game. And I guess he can't go to the ball game either because you and he were gonna drive together. Oh, well. Right? Isn't that how we do it? That's exactly, well, of course, in a much more serious vain. But God said, this is not just affect you. It's gonna affect everybody. Because what he has done, God must now remove Himself from the creation and from His relationship to man, and this is gonna affect everyone. I'm gonna repeat this because this is an important point here. Because of what Adam has done, God must now remove Himself from His relationship with man and His involvement, if you wish, His maintenance of the creation. And you'll see in a moment why this is significant. God is holy, God is sinless and cannot dwell where there is sin or immorality, He cannot. So God and Adam and Eve had a perfect and intimate relationship and fellowship. God maintained the balance of life in the physical world by His presence. His presence in the physical world maintained the perfect balance. So the idea of a perfect world is one where God maintains this perfection through His power. Through His power in the physical universe, there was no deterioration. There was no overpopulation, if you wish. There were no imbalances, why? Because God was actually in the creation with man. He was maintaining, He was sustaining its perfection. But once sin entered the world, God removes His presence and permits the cycle of deterioration to take place. And this is the reality of good and evil that was warned against. He said, you want to know the knowledge of good and evil, you really wanna know that? Okay, now you're gonna know it. The domino effect of deterioration which was not permitted to happen by God's power is now released. I'm holding everything up so that everything is in balance and everything is perfect. But now you've sinned. And you cut off your relation with me, so I remove my hand. And now let this thing just spin by itself, can't do it. Mutations that cause decay begin to form. Overpopulation creates imbalance, whatever. Even in man, the cycle of deterioration will ultimately cause his physical death. So, the separation of God and man because of sin, right, remember I explained that to you once. It's like a tree and there's a branch there. And so long as the branch is in the tree, it has leaves and fruit and so on and so forth. But if you cut that branch off and put it aside, what happens? For a while, that branch looks exactly like the tree and all the other branches and leaves. It's got green leaves, may even have some flowers and fruit on it. But just give it a little while and what happens? The tree keeps growing, the branches on the trees, that's still green. The fruit's still growing. But the branch that has been cut off, eventually those leaves start to brown and that fruit starts to rot and so on and so forth. And you begin to see that that branch if you wait long enough will eventually return to dust. The tree continues, the tree is healthy, it continues to growth. Well, that's exactly what happens to man. Man cuts himself off from God because of sin, and for a time, we're still walking around and talking and building stuff and playing music and having children and being happy and eating and drinking and dancing and doing all kinds of stuff. Just like that branch that's lying there, it looks like it's alive. But we really know that it's just a matter of time before it starts to rot. Well, the same thing with us. Yeah, we cut ourselves off, we look like we're alive. We're moving, we're building, we're procreating, we're doing all kinds of stuff, but it's just a matter of time before we begin to decay and rot and die and just return to the dust. The whole idea of salvation is the idea of regrafting ourselves back into the tree. And we'll talk about that a little later down the line. Of course, this is still before the flood, this judgment. So the rate of decay and the level of imbalance in the creation is still at a very slow pace which explains the longevity of this era, as well as the size of the animals. Why did they live 500 years, 700 years? Well, this was before the flood. There's still death, there's still a certain amount of decay, but it's slow, it's starting off slow. But once the worldwide flood comes again because of sin, you'll see that rate of decay really beginning to accelerate, because what happens? Lifespans, that were 900 and 800 all of a sudden become 140 and 125 and 180. We don't talk about the huge animals anymore. The animals shrink in size and so on and so forth. So once the flood comes the destruction of the ecosystem accelerates to the point where we are today. How come there's so many tornadoes? How come there's so many floods? How come the weather's crazy? How come stuff, there's deserts and why? [laughs] Because, because several thousands years ago this was this flood that destroyed our ecosystem and the balance that was there before. And we're just inheriting this downward spiral, that's all. We're not gonna stop it. We can only mitigate it, we can't stop it. So now the way that this is written in Genesis explains the systems and features and results of a world where God is no longer extending His power to maintain a steady state of life and order, thus allowing all things to gradually disintegrate towards disorder and death. So before, because of His relationship with man and the world, things remained in balance. They were held by Him. Once He removes Him, it starts to decline. So remember, God didn't create death. He merely removed His life-sustaining power and allowed His creation to disintegrate. Which is what it would naturally do without the original life force that gave it existence to begin with. Remember in Genesis 1, the spirit hovered over the deep, that vibration, that life-giving force. God removes that, you're on your own now. You want to be on your own? You want to go the snake's way. You want to know the secret and you want to know what's behind the veil, knowledge of good and evil? Fine, here's the evil, now you know that without me, you die, that's how it works. So this concept of deterioration is not just a preacher here talking about Genesis, this is universally observed and was scientifically formulated actually as a scientific fact over 100 years ago. Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, another scientists. It's called the second law of thermodynamics, scientifically. And the law states that all systems, if left to themselves, tend to become degraded or disordered. All systems, whether they're watches or stars, eventually they wear out, you don't believe me? Just leave your shed alone in the backyard. Never paint it, just leave it alone. Not just for a day or two, but just leave it alone for a couple of years. Eventually, the wind will knock the board off, the rain will start to come in. Eventually there'll be rot. Give it enough time and the thing will just cave in on itself. Everything is like that. And so, modern scientists today are simply reconfirming this law with new equipment. So instead of all things being made, organized into complex systems as they were during creation week, now all systems are being unmade. They're being disorganized, they're returning to more simple forms. This is what's wrong with our world. That's the reason for the deterioration of our world. The problem it sounds too simplistic. Genesis, I mean, you know, Genesis. You'd rather here from some guy with a couple of Ph.D.s. But Genesis remains, scientific ideas to the contrary come and go every couple of decades. All right, so back to the passage and its language. He says, "Cursed is the ground," and that is the exact opposite of what he said at the beginning. At the beginning, He looked at the ground, and what did He say? He said it is very good. God saw everything that He created and He said, it is very good. Now He looks at everything, and He said, "Cursed is the ground." The difference is that God no longer maintains it. The curse is that God removes His sustaining power. You want to be on your? Fine, you work the ground. You go ahead and do it. And then He says, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." Refers to God's mercy. God removes His sustaining power not only as a response to sin, but also to put a limit on the wickedness resulting from sin. Think about it for a second, will you? Better suffering and death accompanying sin then unchecked rebellion and a never-ending multiplication of wicked people using the creation for sinful purposes, could you imagine? Could you imagine the wickedness and the evil if God didn't put a stop to it through death? What do you think Hitler would be doing today if he could live 500 years or 1,000 or 2,000 years? Imagine the evil that people could concoct and bring into the world if they knew that they had hundreds of years to wait it out and put their plans into operation? So once sin was in, there's no going back. Adam had a chance to stop it. But he didn't, so now God has to intervene. He has to stop it. He said okay, I'm taking this out. This thing is gonna peter out on its own. So the curse of the Earth is followed by the result that it would have on man. So what does it have on man? The curse, sorrow, continual disappointment and futility in life, especially in providing for oneself. Less we just lose the big picture here, only about 5% to 7% of the world live well. Everybody else struggles, and if you don't know that, just get on a plane or get on a boat and go to some other countries, you'll find that not everybody is like the US of A. There's 300 million people here, but there's practically seven billion people on Earth. They're not living like us. I mean, the average family in Oklahoma City, the average family, I'm not talking the rich doctors. I'm talking about the average family in Oklahoma is better off than 90% of everybody else in the world. So we shouldn't judge the whole world how they're living by us. All due respect to doctors, we have access to doctors. And we've got one doctor per, I don't know what's the number, so many hundreds of people, or thousands. And you go to Haiti, and they have one doctor per 20,000 people, or something like that. So, it gets into perspective, oh, I had to wait three days to go see my specialist. Or I had two weeks before I had my procedure done, yeah? How about wait two years to have your procedure done? Or not getting it at all unless you could pay a bribe. There are countries that I know of that the medical system is based on a bribes. So if you have the money to pay bribes, then you can get into the hospital. And then if you can pay bribes, then you'll get some medicine and you'll get some painkillers. And everybody's got their hand out. So sorrow, sorrow, the curse is followed by sorrow. Disappointment, yeah, we have our moments even here in this country where we are blessed and we do live well, it's still a hard life, isn't it? We still have to work hard to raise our children, manage our businesses, we're all getting old. We got aches and pains. So it's not all joy even for us who live in a very wealthy country. Another result, pain and suffering that I've just talked about signified by the thorns and the thistles. This world will bring pain, illness, disasters, whatever. And, of course, hard work. Before man eat of the abundance of the garden, now he would have to scratch a living from an uncooperative world. Again, we live in a very blessed country, but whoever makes it in this country, they're working hard, they're putting in a lot of hours. They're studying, they're going to school for a long time, they're up late with kids. Nobody's got the easy life. Everybody's got to earn what they have. And then finally, death. With all of His work and effort, man would like the rest of creation deteriorate back into the primary elements from which he was taken, which is the Earth itself. So this was the nature and result of the curse on Adam. It's interesting to note that Jesus experienced every one of these elements of a curse. You ever think about that? As the Bible says, "He bore the curse on our behalf." Galatians 3:13. This is a little side view here, but I just wanna show you. He was the man of sorrows, wasn't he? Isaiah 53. I mean, you cannot read the New Testament and kind of gleam from the New Testament that Jesus was some kind of jokester, happy go lucky, telling jokes and having a great time. He was man of sorrows 'cause He knew the mission. There are moments of humor, but they're kind of gentle showing the inconsistencies of man. You take the log out of your eye before you take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. That's a kind of a joke, that's a kind of a humorous thing. It's a gentle kind of humor showing the weakness of that other person in a gentle way. But He was no happy-go-lucky guy. He was a man of sorrows, wasn't He? And He was a man that suffered pain, the crown of thorns that He wore symbolized the pain that He suffered. And His work, His labor, made Him sweat like we sweat. But His sweat was drops of blood, Luke 22, suffering to the point where He was losing blood over it. And then finally, "God brought Him into the dust of death." Psalm 22:19. So every single element of the curse that man had, Jesus also physically experienced on his behalf. So God placed a curse on the Earth by withdrawing Himself and thus allowing the world and man to disintegrate into death. But He didn't leave the world without hope that one day he would, from this fallen world, create a new heaven and a new Earth which would never be destroyed by sin and where He would dwell internally with His people. So we're not without hope. Okay, so here's some interesting things. Now that the judgment is pronounced, there's a response from Adam and Eve, they respond. And here's the response. In verse 20, it says, "Now the man called his wife's "name Eve because she was the mother of all living." So what is the response? They don't respond to God, oh, yeah, we get it, please, could you make it a little better? That's not the response. The response is, there is no talking back to God once He's pronounced the judgment. But there is a response, how do you respond to that? So he renames his wife. Originally, he had named her woman, which signified that she was part of him, equal, similar in nature. But now he gives her another name, which signified some very important things. First of all, it signifies that she is a life giver. The word Eve means life giver. And so, it signified that they were going to obey God's command to multiply and fill the Earth. Remember the original command, multiply, go forth, multiply, hadn't done that yet. So now by calling her Eve, the mother of all living, Adam signifies that they will now obey that command. They will begin to multiply. And that is significant and I'll show you why. Because this response shows that they believe God's promise to bring salvation through the seed of the woman. He says, through her seed, her seed, ultimately will bruise the head of the seed of Satan. If she doesn't have any children, there is not going to be any seed. And so, here, Adam and Eve, Adam this time is the one who speaks. Says, okay, we're going to begin having children, despite the curse, despite the sorrow, despite the illness, despite the eventual death, despite everything that you've said, we're going to trust that you will take care of us. And we will begin having and multiplying with children. And so, by bearing children despite pain, the woman is expressing her belief that the Savior will ultimately come. She begins that process. So it's not just let's have children. Having the children is Eve's way of saying, I believe. I will begin that process. I will accept that process. Very, very significant. And then, of course, God renews His relationship with man not based on perfection anymore, because it was imperfection. Now He renews His relationship with man based on faith. You always think, oh, in the New Testament, that's where it talks about faith. No, no, it talks about faith right at the very beginning. It started out you didn't need any faith. Why did you have faith? God was there with you. He had a relationship with you. You didn't have to have faith. You know what I'm saying? Everything's perfect, there's no sin. But now after the fall, after the curse, now the relationship's not based on perfection anymore. Now it's based on faith. Because they believed God's promise expressed in their intention to procreate, Adam and Eve are literally saved. You wonder, how did they get saved? That's how they were saved. So in response to their faith, expressed in obedience, God provides a covering for their shame and guilt and nakedness. Remember, they're still naked here. They tried to cover themselves, right? Genesis 3, "The Lord God may garments "of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." They tried to cover themselves and they couldn't. So God does it for them. I want you to note that animals were sacrificed in order to provide this covering, again, very significant. This is the first type, remember we talked about type in another series? Type, a preview. This is the first preview to indicate how redemption would ultimately come. The blood of the innocent to cover the sin of the guilty. So you wonder, where do they get that idea? Vicarious restitution, where does that come from? It starts in Genesis, something is destroyed. A life is given in order to cover the sin of man. Verse 22, very quickly, we've only got three minutes left. "Then the Lord God said, "'behold the man has become like one of us. "'Knowing good and evil, and now he might stretch "'out his hand and take also from the tree of life "'and eat and live forever.'" So man now knows experientially both good, the fellowship with God and perfect creation, as well as evil, separation from God and the punishment associated with evil. You know, this is exactly the reverse of others after him, after Adam, who experienced evil first and then the saved experience of fellowship with God and perfect through, in other words, Adam starts perfect, and then he builds a relationship through faith after he sinned. We do it in reverse, we sin and we begin in imperfection. And then we build a relationship with God through faith and the perfection that comes through faith. Exactly the reverse. So now Adam is weakened by sin. And although repentant and saved, he can still be tempted to eat of the tree of life. And the result being that he would continue to exist in his sin state forever. So God doesn't want that. He doesn't want man to remain in his sin state forever. Can I make an opinion here, only an opinion, but perhaps this is what Satan did. And this is why there is no salvation for Satan. Perhaps he reached forward thinking he could be greater than God. And froze himself into an external state of curse or damnation forever. There is no salvation for him. Only speculation on my part. And then verse 23 and 24, it says, "Therefore, the Lord God sent him out "from the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground "from which he was taken, so He drove the man out. "And at the east of the garden of Eden, "he stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword "which turned every direction to guard the way "to the tree of life." So, the wording suggests that Adam was reluctant to leave, because God had to push him out, send him out. So God does two thing to guarantee the carrying out His judgment. First, he drives the man and his wife out to their new home, their new work, their new status. And secondly, he put more than one, the cherubim as plural. He puts angels and a flaming sword to protect access to the tree of life. Now, the tree is preserved for a future time. The sword signifies that you cannot get to it without physical death, because the sword always represents death, punishment death. So if you want to come to the tree of life, you have to go through death. The remaining story of the Bible will describe how God worked in order to bring man to the point where he would again reach out and be able to eat of the tree of life. And we zoom forward to Revelation 2:7. And it says, "He who has an ear, "let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches," Now they're talking to us, "to him who overcomes," overcomes what? Overcomes an entire life without giving up faith. For he who overcomes, faith in Jesus, of course. What will happen? "I will grant to eat of the tree of life "which is in the paradise of God." And so, to the church is promised the opportunity to reach out and eat from the tree of life. And Jesus promises that in so many ways in the gospels and so on and so forth. When He talks about internal life and resurrection, that's what He's talking about. All right, that's it for this time. We'll keep on going.