Our text for today is what has become known as the first Gospel promise in the Bible. I guess we might say that there is good news and bad news to the fact that this first Gospel promise comes so early in the Bible. It is bad news from the stand point that we are only three chapters into the beginning of the world and humans have already sinned which is why there is a need for the Gospel. The good news is that our Lord did not wait to give His creatures, Adam and Eve, the promise of a Savior and of sins forgiven. Thus, according to God’s omniscience, He announced their forgiveness earned, and notice this promise is spoken in the past tense, as if it has already happened, by Jesus death on the cross for their sins which is what He was promising and which would not happen until some four thousand years latter. And so, this promise begins the Holy Christian Church as all who will believe in this Savior, this Messiah, this Christ, will be saved.
Our text begins at the point where we have just witnessed Adam and Eve fall for the temptation of the devil. The devil began his tempting by questioning God and His Word. He then moved to tempt them suggesting that they could become like gods, knowing good and evil. They responded to his temptations by questioning God as well and fell for his temptation to become like gods and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Our text begins with their confrontation by God. God knew the sin of Adam and Eve and came looking for them. We read verse nine, “But the LORD God called to the man to him, ‘Where are you?’”(v. 9). It is not that our omniscient, all knowing God, did not know where Adam was, rather it was more of a rhetorical question, simply His way of summoning him.
Adam’s answer is one which reveals his fallen nature. His answer sounds a lot like our answer when we know we have sinned and have been caught. When we sin and are caught we try to hide and we try to hide that we have sinned. Adam answers, verse ten, “And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’”(v. 10). Notice that Adam does not say that he is afraid because he sinned. He says he is afraid because he was naked. He was afraid because he felt the guilt from his sin. Like many of us today, he was afraid because he got caught.
God answers Adam by showing him the evidence of his sin, verse eleven, “He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’” (v. 11). God knew what had happened and here He presents the evidence to Adam to show him that He knew that he had sinned. Up until this point Adam only knew good. Adam was living in innocence. After he ate, not from the apple tree, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, emphasis on evil, then he knew his nakedness and was guilty and ashamed.
Just like us, Adam did not immediately confess to his sin but rather tried to hide his sin and then instead offered excuses. I guess I should not say just like us, instead I should say that we act just like Adam in that instead of confessing our sins we try to hide our sins and make excuses and justify ourselves. God first comes to Adam and confronts him. Notice that from the beginning, from creation, God has already set roles for men and women. These roles are what we call the order of creation. God has given men certain roles and order and he has given women certain roles and order. Because of these set roles God now comes to Adam as the one accountable for what happened, even though Eve was the first to give in to the devil’s temptation. And notice how Adam immediately tries to pass the buck to shift the blame to the woman, but not just the women, he even goes so far as to try and blame God for his sin, notice how he says “the woman you gave me,” emphasis on You, God. Verse twelve, “The man said, ‘The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’”(v. 12). Adam has yet to repent. It was the woman’s fault. It was God’s fault for giving him the woman. She gave me some of the fruit and what could I do except eat it. She ate it, I had to eat it.
Next, God calls Eve to account. Just like Adam, Eve does not repent but instead she tries to pass the buck to shift the blame to someone else. She blames the serpent, verse thirteen, “Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” (v. 13). Eve does not confess. Eve makes excuses. I am not to blame, I was enticed, I was deceived, and I especially like the King James translation, I was beguiled, by the serpent, it was not my fault.
Finally, God meets out justice. We read verses fourteen and fifteen, “So the LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the 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’”(v. 14-15). The first sentence goes to the serpent who was used by the devil. The serpent is cursed. He is to be different from all the other livestock and all the beasts of the field, the wild animals. He is sentenced to crawling on his belly and eating the dust of the ground.
The second sentence goes to the woman. The woman will have enmity, that is, hatred, placed between she and the serpent. Many people would suggest that this is why people are afraid of snakes today, because of the sentence in the garden. The enmity is not just between humans and snakes, but between humans and the devil. There is a constant battle going on in our world, even today, between humans and the devil. There is a constant temptation, even today, to question God and His Word and to be like, or to be gods. It is blatant in some religions, it is subtle in others. Even in the Christian church the devil is still using the old lines of questioning the Bible and of becoming like god or becoming god. We become our own god when we attempt to justify ourselves as not needing a Savior, or at least not as much as the next guy. We become our own god when we interpret the Bible to mean what we want it to mean, despite what God says. We become our own god when we choose and decide what is best for us rather than what God knows is best for us. We become our own god when we make God’s Word something other than God’s Word. And the list goes on as to how we become our own god.
Thanks be to God that even in the middle of these cruses there is for us sinners the promise of a Savior. There is the promise of offspring in general and the promise of an Offspring, a Savior, in specific. About this Offspring, this Savior the promise is that He will bruise or crush the offspring of the serpent, the devil, but in the process the serpent, the devil will bruise or strike His heel. When we go to the Hebrew text we see that the same word is used in both instances, for bruise or crush and for bruise or strike. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, we are looking back and we know and understand this text as having taken place at Calvary. The Offspring, that is the Savior, born to the woman has bruised and crushed the head of the serpent, the devil. He has delivered a decisive, defeating blow to the devil. At the same time we saw the devil deliver a bruise, a strike, a bite, yes, a deadly bite, to the Savior. Jesus died on the cross. But the devil’s bite was not a forever fatal bite. Our Savior did not remain dead, but rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and the devil. Of course, we will not see the complete death blow to the devil until we get to Revelation chapter twenty, but we know it is coming and so does the devil.
Our text for today is one that brings us to confront our own sins as well as comforts us with the good news of sins forgiven. Just like Adam and Eve we try to justify ourselves when we sin. We try to make excuses as to why it is okay that we sin. After all, we are living in the twenty-first century and there is so much sin going on already, what is one more sin, what is our little sin compared to the big sins of others. The commandments have become obsolete. In the category of what is okay in our world today we now have a list that includes, having other gods, cursing and swearing, skipping church, disobedience to parents, teachers and all others who are in authority, killing the unborn and the aged, promiscuity, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, trans-gender, gender fluidity, age fluidity, divorce and living together, stealing as long as you do not get caught, and stealing by misrepresentation and vandalism, gossiping, and coveting. Well, that about covers the ten commandments, so it looks like we have thrown them all out, or at least our society as a whole has, and in many instances they have literally been thrown out, thrown out of our schools and court rooms. The truth of the matter is, we sin. We sin and we cannot hide our sin from God and we would not want to.
We sin and we cannot blame anyone for our sin. The devil cannot make us do it. Very often we sin and rather than repent of our sin, we repent that we got caught. We sin and we try to justify our sin so that it is not as bad as the next person’s sin.
Just like our first parents, Adam and Eve, we sin and God gives us the promise of a Savior. You see, when we try to justify ourselves and show that we have not sinned to much, what we are doing is we are trying to take a little credit for our salvation. We are trying to show God that Jesus only had to die a little for me. In reality we cannot justify ourselves. We sin (period). We sin and cannot save ourselves. We sin and need a Savior. The more we recognize our own sinfulness, the more we recognize how sinful we are, the more beautiful is the message of the Gospel. Think about it, if I am not a big sinner then I do not need much Gospel. Because I am the biggest sinner, I need the most Gospel and that is why it sounds so good to me.
The good news is that all our sins have already been paid for, by Jesus some two thousand years ago on the cross. Truly, all we can do is refuse and reject the forgiveness God has to give and we refuse that forgiveness by not acknowledging and confessing our sins. As we confess, if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins God is faithful and just and forgives us all our sins. That is why we come here every Sunday, to confess our sins and hear the most beautiful words we can ever hear, that our sins are forgiven and with forgiveness we know is life and salvation.
Just as God knew that Adam and Eve sinned and came to confront them with their sin and to give them the words of the Gospel, so too, God knows our sins and He comes looking for us to confront us with our sins and to give us the words of the Gospel, that Jesus died for ours sins, that our sins are forgiven and that He gives us eternal life. And to that we say, to God be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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