Genesis 3:14-24 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Summer Series: Joy for Our Journeys 1 Sunday, July 7, 2019 “The Journey Out of Eden”
Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a perfect world? In some ways, we can probably imagine, and maybe do think about, how things could be better than they are. We can entertain the idea of people getting along better, crime rates going down, more peace and more prosperity. And all sorts of people have tried to do the things that they expect might make the world a better place. They work through politics to try and create a society as close to their expectations as possible. They organize within their neighborhoods to bring people closer together and to help each other. They support the work of charities to help improve opportunities for others. And all of these efforts may very well have an impact. They may make the world, or at least parts of the world, a better place. But it won’t be perfect. In politics, as you have probably noticed, there will almost always be someone to disagree with your take on the best way forward. As hard as neighborhoods and law enforcement agencies have tried, the crime rate never reaches zero. And it is almost a certainty that a charity will run out of money before it helps everyone who could possibly use its help. It is a certainty that this world in which we live will not be a perfect world. And I am not sure that we can really even imagine what it would be like to live in a perfect world. What would it feel like for all our friendships and relationships to be perfect? How would our days be spent if we didn’t have crises to contend with? What would life be like without sorrow or suffering or pain? And the reason that we can’t really imagine what it would be like is that our world is so far from perfect. Our relationships are not always positive. We deal with all sorts of challenges and pain. Emergencies and surprises are simply a part of our lives. It wasn’t always this way. The opening chapters of the Bible tell us how God made the universe. They explain how he followed an orderly procedure to make his world exactly as he wanted it to be. And they go on to explain how he looked at his creation and proclaimed it very good. It was perfect. Everything was perfect, including the two perfect people whom he created to be a part of it, Adam and Eve. And while it is so far from our own experience in a way that makes it terribly difficult to imagine, we know what God says about those perfect people in his perfect world. They were made in his image. In every way their thoughts and desires lined up completely with God’s thoughts and desires. Since that was the case, they also lined up with each other. They enjoyed a human relationship unlike any other ever experienced. Their part of this perfect world was a beautiful garden called Eden. It was watered by rivers and had fruit trees throughout. These perfect people had meaningful but not toilsome work to do in the garden. And they often walked with God and talked with him. It was a blessed existence unimaginable to us today. And it is unimaginable because those very first parents of ours were forced to go on a journey. Their journey took them out of this paradise, out of this garden. They would live out the rest of their lives somewhere else. And all of their descendants have followed with lives outside of
Eden. You already heard the account from Genesis 3 describing their journey, but let’s also review what led up to the events recorded in our First Lesson. While it is true that the perfect man and woman were living in a perfect paradise, it was not long before that perfection was shattered. Satan in the form of a serpent brought to Eve and to Adam a temptation to doubt and to disobey God. It wasn’t a sensible thing. It didn’t fit their image-of-God-inclination to do godly things. The devil tempted them to do the one specific thing that God had forbidden them to do: to eat from a special tree, singled out from all the others, called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The devil suggested that God was keeping some good gift from Adam and Eve, that they should not trust him, but should try the fruit for themselves. And, ultimately, they did. God had warned that eating the fruit from this forbidden tree would bring death, and it did. At its heart, death is a separation. We probably most naturally think of death as the time when the soul and body are separated. We could call that earthly death. And that was certainly a consequence of what Adam and Eve had done. But there was more to it. By their sin, Adam and Eve had been separated from their God. They no longer enjoyed a perfect relationship with him. They no longer carried his perfect image. And their separation from God threatened to last into eternity. The dire consequence of sin is eternal death. But there were other consequences, too. You heard in our lesson how things would become difficult and painful. Working for food would be a toil like it had never been before. Childbirth would cause pain. There were all sorts of effects of sin that would plague the world that had once been perfect. The Bible even compares this to the creation “groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). And as a consequence of their sin, Adam and Eve were forced to leave their beautiful garden home. They journeyed out of Eden because of their sin. The reality was that they had already made a journey by that point. They had journeyed out of perfection and holiness and had journeyed into sin. They had left their perfect relationship with God and with one another and had entered into a world of strife and difficulties and challenges. Their steps out of the garden vividly illustrated what had already taken place. They would live out the rest of their lives outside of Eden. And so would their children, and their children’s children. Generation after generation was born in the image of sinful parents and eventually died. And many, many generations later, here we are…outside of Eden. You and I were conceived and born in sin. You and I have never experienced what Adam and Eve once had—a perfect relationship with God and with each other. You and I have been enemies of God, and that is what we were at the moment we first came into being. You and I have never lived in a world that hadn’t been devastated by sin. But we can’t just blame our first parents. It is not enough for us to admit that we live in and suffer the consequences of living in a world that is no longer perfect. When we look at Adam and Eve’s journey out of Eden, we need to understand that we share in the guilt. We bear a responsibility for the sin that we have committed against our creator. We ought to look at the imperfect world in which we live and find in it the evidence of our own imperfection. We ought to be terrified that we have been separated from God and that our sins deserve separation from him forever. We live in a world that is outside of Eden because of our sins.
And because of those sins, all our earthly journeys are going to have shortcomings and challenges and difficulties. All the paths that we walk in this life will have pitfalls. Our Summer Worship Series is about the journeys that we undertake, just as it is about the journeys that have been undertaken by others, by those we hear about and learn about in Scripture. And all of those journeys remind us that our world has been powerfully affected by the fall into sin. All of those journeys really became necessary because of this first journey. But our series is not about the despair of sin or the hopelessness of our world. It is about joy, joy for our journeys. Even the journey out of Eden was a joyful one in a way, because it didn’t happen only because of sin. It also took place because of God’s love. It doesn’t necessarily sound to us like a loving action as God drives out the pair, Adam and Eve, and stations angels with a flaming sword to prevent their return. It may not be obvious that this is a loving thing to do, but it is. God himself explains that he doesn’t want Adam and Eve to eat from another special tree, the Tree of Life, any longer. He doesn’t want them to live forever—that is, he doesn’t want them to live forever apart from him in a sin-filled world. Things after the fall were no longer the way God had originally intended. His people were not living in perfect harmony with him. They would be challenged, and they would suffer. And God did not intend for it to be that way forever. No, he had something wonderful in store. He promised to them a head-crushing serpent killer. He promised to send one, a descendant of the woman, who would destroy the evil that had been done. And in that way, he would restore everything. God would bring people back into a relationship with himself. He would provide for them an eternity of perfect paradise. This was the very first promise of a Savior, which came at the very first need for a Savior. And though Adam and Eve did not know the amazing details of how this plan and promise would turn out, we do. This is Jesus, who suffered and died on the cross. He experienced the painful strike of the serpent. But he also proclaimed, “It is finished,” and he rose from the grave. He crushed the head of that adversary and destroyed him and his work forever. And that means that we have a new paradise to look forward to. It means that we have a new Eden awaiting us at the end of this life. It means that one day we will enjoy a perfect relationship with our God as we live with him forever. It is impossible for us to truly understand or even imagine what that will be like. It is impossible because all of our journeys take place outside of Eden. But the journey of our lives is on a path that leads to our eternal heavenly home. It is God’s guarantee and God’s promise to us. And it will be better than anything we could imagine. Amen.
The Text: Genesis 3:14-24 EHV 14
The Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every wild animal. You shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” 16
To the woman he said: “I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing. With painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.” 17
To Adam he said: “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat from it,’ the soil is cursed on account of you. You will eat from it with painful labor all the days of your life. 18 Thorns and thistles will spring up from the ground for you, but you will eat the crops of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the soil, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 20
The man named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. 21The Lord God made clothing of animal skins for Adam and for his wife and clothed them. 22The Lord God said, “Look, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, so that he does not reach out his hand and also take from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever—” 23the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he had been taken. 24So he drove the man out, and in front of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned in every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life.