Brand New: Fall
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Text
Sermon Text
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 contrary to your husband, but 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.”
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
This week…This week alone...
1...We’ve seen record number of COVID deaths and cases in many states including ours. The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 111 additional deaths on Tuesday setting a new one-day record. 111 IN MISSISSIPPI alone!
1,000 Out of State Contract Workers have been brought in to help us manage the surging numbers…According to the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Center for Quality & Workforce, Today, Mississippi has at least 2000 fewer nurses than it did at the beginning of the year.
When one Nursing Manager at one of the major hospital systems in Mississippi was asked if the state’s health care system was reaching a break point.
The nursing manager responded, “I think we already broke.”
So that happened and is happening this week. ALSO this week
2…All the way across the world in Afghanistan, 170 people including 13 U.S. Service members were killed after a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a Kabul airport checkpoint where Afghans and Americans were flocking to escape an increasingly hostile regime. It’s considered one of the worst single days in the history of this mission.
Folks are still in danger with people who want to evacuate still not able to get out.
In addition there are many Christians there, both American and Afghan, who are currently facing the possible threat of harm or even death, due to the fact that the new government sees them as a threat.
So that happened and is happening this week. ALSO this week…Matter of fact, RIGHT NOW
3…Hurricane Ida is bearing down on brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast…it quite possibly may be the strongest hurricane to hit the area since the 1850s, even stronger than KATRINA. After landing in New Orleans most forecast having heading right up to us in the lesser form of a tropical storm.
ALL OF THAT has happened this week!
That’s to say nothing of the divisive times were living in with more and more us being pushed hard to one side or the other...
NOR is that to say anything of the doubtful times that we are living in with people struggling to hold fast to their faith...
NOR is that to say anything of the struggling right in this room...
All of that is just what we are experiencing THIS WEEK!!!!
The question is WHY?
And the answer is Genesis 3:14-19
When we look at this passage, we see several ways in which the fall completely disrupted not simply humanity but the entire creation.
The first thing we have to understand is something that we talked about earlier in this series back in the sermon called man...
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Man was the crowning achievement of creation. All of creation was placed under his care. They were given full reign of the Earth to steward, to use, to produce all for their pleasure and God’s glory.
So there is this beautiful connection between all of a creation. Each part depends on the other. The Hebrew word for it is shalom.
Tim Keller gives us a quick breakdown of the word:
“The Hebrew word for this perfect, harmonious interdependence among all parts of creation is called shalom. We translate this as “peace,” but the English word is basically negative, referring to the absence of trouble or hostility. The Hebrew word means much more than that. It means absolute wholeness – full, harmonious, joyful, flourishing life.”
And then they fell...
And so, because all of creation is interconnected and man is the crowning achievement of that creation, when man fell, the creation entrusted to man’s care fell with him!
Here is Keller again:
The devastating loss of shalom through sin is described in Genesis 3. We are told that as soon as we determined to serve ourselves instead of God – as soon as we abandoned living for and enjoying God as our highest good – the entire created world became broken. Human beings are so integral to the fabric of things that when human beings turned from God the entire warp and woof of the world unraveled. Disease, genetic disorders, famine, natural disasters, aging, and death itself are as much the result of sin as are oppression, war, crime, and violence. We have lost God’s shalom – physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically, culturally. Things now fall apart. In Romans 8, Paul says that the entire world is now “in bondage to decay” and “subject to futility” and will not be put right until we are put right.
If you give man an inherently GOOD world and along with it, you give them the call to subdue and have dominion over it and they respond by introducing sin, it’s like handing them the football out of the snap and then they immediately fumble it into the hands of the opposing team.
It doesn’t just affect them, it affects EVERYTHING that is connected to them!
This passage gives us a few ways in which that happens…
First, we see the introduction to great pain and suffering:
I. The Pain of Human Suffering
I. The Pain of Human Suffering
Genesis 3:16 (ESV)
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children...”
We hear two things in this text: MERCY and PAIN.
Let’s start with MERCY. How do we hear MERCY here? We hear it in the words: “childbearing” and “you shall bring forth children”
How is that mercy? Well it means, that life will continue. God has committed still, from these sinful and corrupted vessels, to bring life into this world.
Collectively, nothing brings us more joy in this world than the arrival of children. They remind us that despite all the death, all the suffering, all the hurting that exists around us and despite the sin of Adam and all of our sinfulness that followed him, LIFE IS STILL VERY POSSIBLE.
However, there are two sides to the coin of verse 16. Out of mercy, we are still given opportunities for life but that life comes with PAIN...
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children”
The experience of giving life was not suppose to bring so much pain but now due to sin not only is life giving painful but it is GREATLY INTENSIFIED.
ILLUSTRATION: Our children are our joy…We love BJ and Elijah. They bring us so much happiness and so much life, but both of them came into this world through a tremendous amount of pain for Candi.
Due to complications, Candi was in labor for hours upon hours upon hours…suffering fever and infection, just to bring BJ into the world.
Life through GREAT and ENORMOUS PAIN
When BJ arrived into this world, He had to immediately began antibiotic treatments because he received the same infection that his mom suffered during labor. He was later rushed to Central Mississippi Medical Center over in Jackson and placed in Newborn ICU. The doctor there said the proactive actions of our pediatrician to start treating him with antibiotics even before she knew of an infection probably saved his life.
Life through GREAT and ENORMOUS PAIN
Many of you have similar stores…many of you can point to others who have stories.
Many of you have stories where your child or your friends’ child or your family members’ child didn’t make it...
You know what it feels like to experience LIFE through great and enormous pain. That is a product of a sinful world.
Listen, there is NO WAY around it! Some of us may experience less than others but we will not live this life without experiencing some of it.
If you try to live life under the delusion that you will not experience such pain, you are in a sense dismissing the impacts of sin...
Christian Therapist Chip Dodd puts it this way, “Life is TRAGIC but God is FAITHFUL.
These are the conditions created by sin…the sooner we learn that, the sooner we can begin to live a life through pain that is fully dependent on God to carry us through the pain. The impacts of the fall don’t stop here though...
In the second half of verse 16 we see another impact of the Fall, the Struggle of Relationships.
II. The Struggle of Relationships
II. The Struggle of Relationships
Genesis 3:16 (ESV)
16 ...Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
In many Bible versions this verse says “Your desire shall be FOR YOUR HUSBAND” It’s for that reason that many folks get it confused and hear it as some sort of assurance that Eve will have a strong desire to love her husband.
However a helpful clue to understand this verse is found in Genesis 4:4-7
4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
That sentence in Genesis 4:7 - “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” is written in the same kind of grammatical structure as Genesis 3:16 “
Sin’s desire for you is not a good thing. Eve’s desire for Adam in Genesis 16 isn’t either.
What God is pronouncing here is the beginning of ongoing conflict in relationships...
Before sin, Adam and Eve are fully exposed in the garden without a hint of shame…their fully vulnerable, absent of shame, and united in their call to be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth, and exercise dominion
And then sin shows up on the scene…vulnerability drops, shame rises, unity drops, conflict rises...
One theologian captures it this way...
Genesis 3:16 portrays a marriage relation in which control has slipped from the fully personal realm to that of instinctive urges... ‘To love and to cherish’ becomes ‘To desire and to dominate’. While even pagan marriage can rise far above this, the pull of sin is always towards it.
Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Man’s Fall and Expulsion (3:1–24))
This is not just marriage…the pull of sin in any relationship moves in this direction.
From love and cherish, and vulnerability and sacrifice to DESIRE AND DOMINATE.
You don’t have to look far to find this impact. Literally in the very next chapter, with the very next set of family members, we get a murder. A man MURDERING his own brother.
And that murder is ultimately a failure of relationship...
In these two brothers, we see the immediate impacts of the fall…
Jealousy and envy: Cain watches as Abel’s sacrifice is accepted while his is not and gets angry.
What’s interesting about Cain’s anger against Abel is that it is misplaced. God says to Cain: “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” Meaning if you just do well you would be accepted as well.
Anybody ever seen that happen before…a kid studies hard for a test gets a good grade, another kid goofs off gets a failing grade and then says to the other kid “you think you’re better than us? Don’t you?”
No, apparently, YOU think YOU’RE better than us so much better that you don’t even have to study!!!!
But sin doesn’t lean towards accountability…it leans away from it.
Lack of accountability and responsibility: In fact, when God asks Cain about Abel’s whereabouts, Cain responds “Am I my brother’s keeper????” I don’t owe him anything…I’m not responsible to him or for him.
This impairment of relationships is seen all throughout Scripture...
Abraham and the conflict he creates by having a son with his mistress...
The conflict between Jacob and Esau
The conflict between Joseph and his brothers...
The conflict between Egypt and Israel
Because of sin, we see relationships navigating one conflict after another and at the heart of those conflicts is the Genesis 3 judgment...
Because of sin we’ve moved from love and cherish to DESIRE AND DOMINATE.
This is what the Apostle James says about this reality...
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
The sin on the inside of us is what keeps trouble stirred...
The lack of patience that leaves little room for disagreement...
The lack of mercy that leaves little room for someone to wrong you...
The lack of gentleness that leaves little room for you to address someone in the wrong in a way that they would be able to hear it...
The lack of humility that keeps you from being able to repent and apologize for your part in the conflict...
The selfishness that keeps you pushing yourself to the center of attention in your relationships...
The lack of self control that keeps you looking for like-minded people that will encourage you in your addictions rather than challenge you in your lust and passions...
Then there’s the trauma from others in the past sinning against you, that you think you’ve buried but that still shows up in the way you treat others, the way you retreat from others, the lack of trust you give to others...
You see so many times we end up in terrible relationships and we spend all of our time looking for reasons outside of us as to why those relationships are soooo bad,
But Saints of God...the greatest counsel I can give you this morning ourselves is to start inward and ask yourselves “is it my own indwelling sin or is it my own unwillingness to confront the hurt in my heart from someone else’s indwelling sin that keeps me running to these bad relationships”
Because at the heart of most of our relationship woes is the impact of the FALL. Instead of looking outside of you, spend sometime asking the Lord to reveal anything that is inside of you that may be causing the dysfunction and then by His Spirit began the work to weed it out...
Make your prayer the Prayer of the Psalmist in Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Now, for a few minutes let’s turn our attention to Adam...Because in God’s judgment on Adam we see some additional impacts of the Fall
III. The Toil of Productivity
III. The Toil of Productivity
Here is very very important portion lesson in the story of creation. WORK WAS NEVER A PART OF THE FALL.
We were made to create.
We were made to create beauty in the world.
We were made to produce in the world. To produce humans, but also to produce new inventions, new ideas, new culture, new art, new music.
God placed Adam in the Garden and said the whole world is yours to subdue and exercise dominion over...
Before the fall, we get these words...
Genesis 2:15
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
God created Adam with the intent to work...
I know some of you are probably sitting in here saying to yourself…We’ll I didn’t inherit that from Adam because I hate working!!!!
God looked at Adam and saw him working and said “It is Good” He looks at me everyday working and says “Not Good!”
But that’s because you are working POST FALL. Genesis 3:17-19 explains:
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.”
Part of the Fall is not only our death but the death of creation…
Creation is fallen…Why does New Orleans this very hour have a CATEGORY 4/CATEGORY 5 Hurricane bearing down on it and its citizens because the FALL not only brought the suffering of man but the suffering of everything man was given responsibility to subdue and exercise dominion over...
Even Creation itself testifies to this reality
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Creation will be redeemed when man is redeemed. It is forever tied to us...
So, now as a result of the fall of man and creation, work, production, and creativity has become painful!
In fact, the same word for pain here in the description of creation’s plight is the word used to describe the new pain experienced in Eve’s childbearing.
We work and no matter how hard we work, no matter how painful the work is, the thorns and thistles keep coming back.
We cannot produce, we cannot create, we cannot make, we cannot work without pain, without toil, without exhausting exertion...
Our very livelihood depends on it...
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.”
Here’s what that means: We are in a unending cycle of work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep…we stop working, we stop eating, we stop sleeping and we lose the ability to produce, to create, to make, to eat, and we will eventually die...
Don’t believe me? Give it a shot! Say me and my family are just going to stop producing…we’re going to stop working, stop cleaning, stop cooking, stop dreaming, stop planning, we’re going to shut it down...
You probably won’t last a month…So this is an inescapable reality...
But here is the thing, while you do that because of the fall as you do it, you are losing a little bit of yourself…little by little by little until there is nothing left and you return to the dust...
So if you try to stop the pain of working you’ll die, but it you keep working you will prolong death but will eventually die...
This is the result of the Fall…this is what it has produced…so what’s the answer?
Jesus, the answer to the Fall
1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.