Troy a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Genesis 3:1-7; The Point of Origin.
In the opening of the third chapter of Genesis, you have the record of the serpent in the Garden tempting Eve and her subsequent disobedience to God and then Adam following in her disobedience. And immediately upon that disobedience they were both filled with shame, as indicated by the awareness of their nakedness in verse 7, and the sewing together of fig leaves to cover themselves.
This incident has monumental impact. Up to this point, according to chapter 1 verse 31, God saw all that He had made, that would be everything that He had created in the six days, and behold, it was very good. Everything was very good. Chapter 2, of course, is an expansion of the creation of man on day 6 and so at the end of chapter 2 everything is still very good. But when you come to chapter 3, a dramatic change takes place and from then on everything is very bad.
The simple narrative of the opening seven verses of Genesis chapter 3 describes for us the first act of human disobedience which brought about the curse on all mankind, the Fall, the impact of that Fall has touched every part of the universe. It is accurate to say that absolutely everything wrong in our world is because of sin. If there were no sin there would be nothing wrong. If there were no sin, everything would be very good. Everything created in the heavens, everything created on the earth would be very good as it was on day six. But because of sin, everything is very bad, from world wars, terrorism, mass murders, serial killings, plane crashes, auto accidents, fires, crippling and maiming of people through accidents, nuclear reactor disasters like Chernoble(?), radiation poisoning, pollution, cancer, heart disease, all illnesses to all broken relationships, all divorce, all orphaned children, all drugs, all crime, all dereliction in all forms, all confusion, all conflict, all struggle, all disappointment, all anxiety, all fear, all guilt, all depression, all sorrow, all failure, all remorse as well as all lust and selfishness and pride and hatred and covetousness and rebellion and murder and stealing and sexual acts outside of marriage and irresponsibility and disobedience to parents. In a summary, all evil, all sadness, all failure, all death is because of sin.
And people who don't believe in sin and don't understand the Fall, cannot diagnose properly the human dilemma. It is impossible to understand the world. It is impossible to understand the cosmos, the ordered world of creation. It is impossible to understand man. It is impossible to understand the disintegration of matter. It is impossible to understand the collapsing world and universe. It is impossible to understand man's behavior if you do not understand that it is all a product of sin. And all sin in the world is a result of what happened in Genesis 3.
So Genesis 3 as a point of origin is absolutely critical. In fact, it is arguably the most important chapter in the Bible because it explains why the rest of the Bible tells the story of redemption. Everything wrong is because of sin. And ultimately everything dies...everything in the physical world dies and sin is the killer.
And we really do need to pull off the painted masks that sin wears and reveal the death's head that is behind the mask. One old writer said, "Who is the hoary sexton that digs man a grave? Who is the painted temptress who steals his virtue? Who is the murderess that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul? Sin. Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth? Who breaks the hearts of parents? Who brings old men's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave? Sin. Who by a more hideous metamorphose than Ovid ever fancied changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters and their fathers into worse than Herods? The murderers of their own innocence? Sin. Who casts the apple of discord on household hearts? Who lights the torch of war and bears it blazing over trembling lands? Who by divisions in the church rends Christ's seamless robe? Sin. Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who winning smiles on her face, honey flattery on her tongue stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality and when suspicion sleeps, treacherously pierces our temples with a nail? What fair siren is this who seated on a rock by the deadly pool smiles to deceive, sings to allure, kisses to betray and flings her arm around our neck to leap with us into perdition? Sin. Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone? Who hurls reason from her lofty throne and impels sinners mad as Gaderene swine down a precipice into a lake of fire? Sin."
That's prosaic and it's true. And this is the foundation of any true world view. Any accurate understanding of the way things are in the world demands an understanding of sin. Without an understanding of this there is not a true understanding of anything because sin has affected everything. Listen to Romans 8 verse 20, "For the creation was subjected to futility, or to emptiness, not of its own will but because of him who subjected it." In other words, it wasn't that the whole of creation wanted this futility, this fallen condition, it was the punishment of God for the sin of man. The creation itself, verse 21 says, "Also will be set free from its slavery to corruption." There is a defining statement. Currently the entire creation, everything that was made on the six days of creation, is in slavery to corruption. That is a defining statement in Romans 8:21. And that's why verse 22 says, "The whole creation groans and suffers like the pain of childbirth together until now."
And again, the whole creation in every aspect of it is collectively suffering through the pains of the curse that God placed on it, the futility, the inability to be what it was designed to be and that's all as a result of sin. Because of sin, no part of creation now exists as God intended it to be. You're not the way God intended you to be, I'm not the way God intended me to be. Birds aren't the way God intended them to be and animals aren't the way God intended them to be, and plants aren't the way God intended them to be. And the seeds of the earth are not the way God intended them to be. Water isn't the way He intended, and land, and mountains and all the wondrous phenomena of the stellar realm, all of the planets and all of the stars and all that goes into infinity is not what God originally made it to be. It is all reduced to some level of futility. It was subjected which means it was torn down...subjected, it was brought down...futility. Futility is mataiotes in the Greek and it basically means "be without success." That would be a good meaning for the word. Or another way to say it, "unable to achieve a goal." To be a failure, basically.
So that the point here is that the whole created universe fails to be what God designed it to be. It is all short of God's intention. It is unable to achieve its goal. It is unable to achieve its purpose. It was literally, by the Fall, subjected to an unsuccessful existence.
And then in verse 21, as I mentioned, there is a slavery to corruption. Slavery indicates an inability to free oneself, a bondage that can't be broken. Here is this universe unsuccessfully trying to achieve its intended purpose, it is unable to do that. Nothing in the universe can be what God designed it to be. And therefore it is enslaved to principles of corruption. That simply can be defined by two words...decay and eventual death...decay and death. Everything is in decay and headed for extinction. Everything in the universe is going in that direction. The whole thing is enslaved to corruption.
And then in verse 22, "The whole creation groans," stenazo, and that verb usually is used to refer to the cry of someone who is in a dreadful situation with no hope of escape. It's someone in an impossible situation. So here is the whole creation unable to achieve its God-designed purpose, enslaved to the process of decay and death, crying out with groans that represent the frustration of being unable to extract yourself from a dreadful situation. And along with it, suffering the pains of childbirth. That's metaphoric, the severest and lasting pains, the increasingly hard pains of bringing forth a child are like the pains that creation feels. The groaning under a constant, severe pain as in childbirth.
Now that is a description of the current universe. And verse 23 adds, "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan." And he's talking here about believers. Everybody groans, everybody groans under this decay and death and even believers feel the weight of that eagerly, he says, waiting for our adoption as sons and waiting for the redemption of our body. We're waiting to finally be released from this enslavement to corruption and to be what we have not only been created to be, but recreated in Christ to be.
So you have an entire universe that can best be explained by Romans 8:20 to 22. No education, no socialization, no civilization, no psychology, no technology, no physiology, no advances in any of those realms can ever alter this inevitable dilemma. This is how it is in the universe. Everything tends toward death. Everything is in a process of decay. The entire universe feels the effect of having been by God subjected to futility.
Now the question comes...what caused all of this? You go from a universe in chapter 1 verse 31, stated that God said He saw all and it was very good, to a universe where nothing is very good. Everything is blighted, everything is effected by decay and ultimately headed for death. This is massive change. This is a wholesale alteration. This is a complete reversal.
How does this all happen? Romans to chapter 5 verse 12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Now what this tells us is very simple. Sin entered the world through one man. And by that sin came death, and, of course, implied the decay that leads inevitably to death. First Corinthians 15:22 says it in even more brief and specific words, "In Adam all die."
All death that exists in the universe can be traced back to one man. It can be traced back to one man, Adam. What Adam did in the Garden as a recorded in Genesis chapter 3, what he did as his wife led him to do it, literally brought sin into this universe and with it brought death on the entire universe as God subjected it all to futility, brought it into slavery to corruption and left it to groan and suffer until the day when He renews the earth when He mitigates the curse and finally at the end of the Millennial Kingdom when He uncreates the fallen creation and creates a new heaven and new earth.
Amen
Troy
Genesis 3:1-7; The Point of Origin.
In the opening of the third chapter of Genesis, you have the record of the serpent in the Garden tempting Eve and her subsequent disobedience to God and then Adam following in her disobedience. And immediately upon that disobedience they were both filled with shame, as indicated by the awareness of their nakedness in verse 7, and the sewing together of fig leaves to cover themselves.
This incident has monumental impact. Up to this point, according to chapter 1 verse 31, God saw all that He had made, that would be everything that He had created in the six days, and behold, it was very good. Everything was very good. Chapter 2, of course, is an expansion of the creation of man on day 6 and so at the end of chapter 2 everything is still very good. But when you come to chapter 3, a dramatic change takes place and from then on everything is very bad.
The simple narrative of the opening seven verses of Genesis chapter 3 describes for us the first act of human disobedience which brought about the curse on all mankind, the Fall, the impact of that Fall has touched every part of the universe. It is accurate to say that absolutely everything wrong in our world is because of sin. If there were no sin there would be nothing wrong. If there were no sin, everything would be very good. Everything created in the heavens, everything created on the earth would be very good as it was on day six. But because of sin, everything is very bad, from world wars, terrorism, mass murders, serial killings, plane crashes, auto accidents, fires, crippling and maiming of people through accidents, nuclear reactor disasters like Chernoble(?), radiation poisoning, pollution, cancer, heart disease, all illnesses to all broken relationships, all divorce, all orphaned children, all drugs, all crime, all dereliction in all forms, all confusion, all conflict, all struggle, all disappointment, all anxiety, all fear, all guilt, all depression, all sorrow, all failure, all remorse as well as all lust and selfishness and pride and hatred and covetousness and rebellion and murder and stealing and sexual acts outside of marriage and irresponsibility and disobedience to parents. In a summary, all evil, all sadness, all failure, all death is because of sin.
And people who don't believe in sin and don't understand the Fall, cannot diagnose properly the human dilemma. It is impossible to understand the world. It is impossible to understand the cosmos, the ordered world of creation. It is impossible to understand man. It is impossible to understand the disintegration of matter. It is impossible to understand the collapsing world and universe. It is impossible to understand man's behavior if you do not understand that it is all a product of sin. And all sin in the world is a result of what happened in Genesis 3.
So Genesis 3 as a point of origin is absolutely critical. In fact, it is arguably the most important chapter in the Bible because it explains why the rest of the Bible tells the story of redemption. Everything wrong is because of sin. And ultimately everything dies...everything in the physical world dies and sin is the killer.
And we really do need to pull off the painted masks that sin wears and reveal the death's head that is behind the mask. One old writer said, "Who is the hoary sexton that digs man a grave? Who is the painted temptress who steals his virtue? Who is the murderess that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul? Sin. Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth? Who breaks the hearts of parents? Who brings old men's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave? Sin. Who by a more hideous metamorphose than Ovid ever fancied changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters and their fathers into worse than Herods? The murderers of their own innocence? Sin. Who casts the apple of discord on household hearts? Who lights the torch of war and bears it blazing over trembling lands? Who by divisions in the church rends Christ's seamless robe? Sin. Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who winning smiles on her face, honey flattery on her tongue stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality and when suspicion sleeps, treacherously pierces our temples with a nail? What fair siren is this who seated on a rock by the deadly pool smiles to deceive, sings to allure, kisses to betray and flings her arm around our neck to leap with us into perdition? Sin. Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone? Who hurls reason from her lofty throne and impels sinners mad as Gaderene swine down a precipice into a lake of fire? Sin."
That's prosaic and it's true. And this is the foundation of any true world view. Any accurate understanding of the way things are in the world demands an understanding of sin. Without an understanding of this there is not a true understanding of anything because sin has affected everything. Listen to Romans 8 verse 20, "For the creation was subjected to futility, or to emptiness, not of its own will but because of him who subjected it." In other words, it wasn't that the whole of creation wanted this futility, this fallen condition, it was the punishment of God for the sin of man. The creation itself, verse 21 says, "Also will be set free from its slavery to corruption." There is a defining statement. Currently the entire creation, everything that was made on the six days of creation, is in slavery to corruption. That is a defining statement in Romans 8:21. And that's why verse 22 says, "The whole creation groans and suffers like the pain of childbirth together until now."
And again, the whole creation in every aspect of it is collectively suffering through the pains of the curse that God placed on it, the futility, the inability to be what it was designed to be and that's all as a result of sin. Because of sin, no part of creation now exists as God intended it to be. You're not the way God intended you to be, I'm not the way God intended me to be. Birds aren't the way God intended them to be and animals aren't the way God intended them to be, and plants aren't the way God intended them to be. And the seeds of the earth are not the way God intended them to be. Water isn't the way He intended, and land, and mountains and all the wondrous phenomena of the stellar realm, all of the planets and all of the stars and all that goes into infinity is not what God originally made it to be. It is all reduced to some level of futility. It was subjected which means it was torn down...subjected, it was brought down...futility. Futility is mataiotes in the Greek and it basically means "be without success." That would be a good meaning for the word. Or another way to say it, "unable to achieve a goal." To be a failure, basically.
So that the point here is that the whole created universe fails to be what God designed it to be. It is all short of God's intention. It is unable to achieve its goal. It is unable to achieve its purpose. It was literally, by the Fall, subjected to an unsuccessful existence.
And then in verse 21, as I mentioned, there is a slavery to corruption. Slavery indicates an inability to free oneself, a bondage that can't be broken. Here is this universe unsuccessfully trying to achieve its intended purpose, it is unable to do that. Nothing in the universe can be what God designed it to be. And therefore it is enslaved to principles of corruption. That simply can be defined by two words...decay and eventual death...decay and death. Everything is in decay and headed for extinction. Everything in the universe is going in that direction. The whole thing is enslaved to corruption.
And then in verse 22, "The whole creation groans," stenazo, and that verb usually is used to refer to the cry of someone who is in a dreadful situation with no hope of escape. It's someone in an impossible situation. So here is the whole creation unable to achieve its God-designed purpose, enslaved to the process of decay and death, crying out with groans that represent the frustration of being unable to extract yourself from a dreadful situation. And along with it, suffering the pains of childbirth. That's metaphoric, the severest and lasting pains, the increasingly hard pains of bringing forth a child are like the pains that creation feels. The groaning under a constant, severe pain as in childbirth.
Now that is a description of the current universe. And verse 23 adds, "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan." And he's talking here about believers. Everybody groans, everybody groans under this decay and death and even believers feel the weight of that eagerly, he says, waiting for our adoption as sons and waiting for the redemption of our body. We're waiting to finally be released from this enslavement to corruption and to be what we have not only been created to be, but recreated in Christ to be.
So you have an entire universe that can best be explained by Romans 8:20 to 22. No education, no socialization, no civilization, no psychology, no technology, no physiology, no advances in any of those realms can ever alter this inevitable dilemma. This is how it is in the universe. Everything tends toward death. Everything is in a process of decay. The entire universe feels the effect of having been by God subjected to futility.
Now the question comes...what caused all of this? You go from a universe in chapter 1 verse 31, stated that God said He saw all and it was very good, to a universe where nothing is very good. Everything is blighted, everything is effected by decay and ultimately headed for death. This is massive change. This is a wholesale alteration. This is a complete reversal.
How does this all happen? Romans to chapter 5 verse 12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Now what this tells us is very simple. Sin entered the world through one man. And by that sin came death, and, of course, implied the decay that leads inevitably to death. First Corinthians 15:22 says it in even more brief and specific words, "In Adam all die."
All death that exists in the universe can be traced back to one man. It can be traced back to one man, Adam. What Adam did in the Garden as a recorded in Genesis chapter 3, what he did as his wife led him to do it, literally brought sin into this universe and with it brought death on the entire universe as God subjected it all to futility, brought it into slavery to corruption and left it to groan and suffer until the day when He renews the earth when He mitigates the curse and finally at the end of the Millennial Kingdom when He uncreates the fallen creation and creates a new heaven and new earth.
Amen
Troy
