Princeton Presbyterian Church

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1672

February 9, 2025

Genesis 3.8-24             Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“From the Dust in the Image of God”

 

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 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. 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.” 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.” 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; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 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.” The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

 

• The Presence of the Lord God

 

Growing up in South Carolina, we had a cockroach problem. I’m sure it still exists to this day, even with modern exterminating abilities. Sometimes they are called palmetto bugs. These insects are not your normal itty bitty insects that you might find in other parts of the country, these monsters are about an inch to an inch and a half long and sometimes appear even larger. They sneak into homes and when you see one you first wonder if you have enough strength to kill it, and then when you try, it flies directly at your head like a smart bomb and you have to duck and move as if you could evade a bullet. But other times when you enter a dark room and turn on the lights, they will scurry across the floor looking for a place to hide, and they might be carrying one of your shoes on their back. I exaggerate a little. When there is light, those who love the darkness will always seek to hide.

That is true of most creatures, even humans. Our natural instinct is to hide when our bad deeds are exposed to the light. This was the situation in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve. They knew they had entered into darkness by disobeying God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So as God is walking in the garden it appears that Adam and Eve scurried away to hide. “Where are you?” As I imagine this dialogue, I imagine there is a few moments of pause as Adam tries to figure out what to say. “Um...I heard you coming, I was afraid and naked.” He was exposed in his disobedience. “I hid.” Sometimes in Scripture God gives people a new name, Adam could have become Palmetto Bug.

“I was afraid.” Fear is one of the most destructive consequences of sin. Notice the language of “I” – I heard, I was afraid, I was naked; I hid; I ate… The language is all about Adam and Eve. This was the first time the focus was no longer on the God who created them and gave them this beautiful garden and gave them to each another to enjoy. No, now it is about the guilt and shame that incriminated them both. It is no longer a focus on the Creator but on the self, on the creature. The implication is that prior to their eating of the tree there was no fear, no shame, no hint of anything wrong with being naked before one another. But then, they were afraid.

There is a wonderful passage in 1 John 4 that speaks of love casting out fear.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4.16-19).

God loved Adam and Eve as His created beings made in His own image. He loved them in placing them in the garden, providing everything they would need, and giving them to one another.

 

One commentator suggests that Genesis 3.10 is the opposite of 1 John 4.18. John writes that perfect love casts out fear while Genesis 3.10 shows that fear casts out love. And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Fear is deeply connected to anxiety which is connected to doubting God’s provision for life. When we fail to trust God for all things in life, we become anxious and afraid. A constant theme throughout the entire Bible is the message: “Do not be afraid.” Sometimes the assurance is that God is with us, other times it is that God will provide, and other times it is that God has promised a future. The main message is that we need not fear. We are loved. We have been given provisions for life and life in abundance.

Genesis 3 is a revelation of our fears and our capacity for disobedience. Adam and Eve hid and they had good reason since they had just discovered the act of disobedience. Their eyes were opened to good and evil. This was their first experience of shame, fear, and vulnerability. One of the wonders of Genesis is that it reveals our nature of sin and disobedience. We also try to run and hide when God comes our way. We experience the pain of disobedience with our sin and in the presence of a holy God, we want to hide.

But I also want to share with you another thing I believe is true about us. Even the most faithful are sometimes wanting to hide as we grow deeper in fellowship with God. It is truly a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10.31). That verse in Hebrews is dealing with sin as well, but even when we are growing closer to God, even when we are enjoying more and more joyful closeness with God, the fear can grow. This is true because the closer we come to God the more we can also see our sinful nature and the more that needs to be crucified in us. I learned from those who spend their lives seeking deeper fellowship like monks and nuns, that we fear not only doing evil that may move us away from God but also becoming more holy which moves us closer to God. It is complicated! I would say though that the fear that comes when growing closer quickly dissipates when we experience a new and deeper experience of God’s love. Growing closer to God can be very intimidating because we are growing closer and closer to holiness.

Back to Genesis 3…

 

 

 

• Have You Eaten?

 

The Lord asks if they have eaten of the forbidden fruit. The Lord knows they have eaten, He is prompting a confession and repentance. It reminds me of a parent who knows full well that the child has taken the cookies out of the cookie jar, but seeks to have the child admit his action. Better to admit your fault than to continue in the lie. Cleansing can only come out of confession and repentance. We live in a time when few people will take responsibility for their actions. We live like Adam, blaming others, like the child who refuses to say he took the cookies. It is always someone else’s fault or the system’s fault or the devil made me do it or my circumstances or...anything but me.

What may be the worst thing Adam does is lay some of the blame on God! The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” You gave me this woman and now look what has happened. You gave her to me! It’s not my fault. You! Her! It is part of our inherited nature to look anywhere but ourselves when a sin has been committed. There may be a small part of us that sees Adam as quite brave to say something like that to God, but it is the opposite. It is both cowardly and irresponsible to imagine that God is at fault for giving Adam his helper. In the south we would say of Adam, “Bless his heart.”

Adam tries to remove his own guilt by pointing the finger at Eve, and even at God. He refuses to accept responsibility. He refuses to be the man he was created to be. How deeply do we see this among many men today, refusing to take responsibility for their actions, refusing to accept the role God has created for men? Eve does the same, "not my fault, the devil made me do it". Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Human nature on full display. The accountable action is to take responsibility for our sin, repent, and seek the forgiveness given in Christ.

Here is the good news, Romans 5:8 - “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Here is the good news, 2 Corinthians 7.1, 10, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God...For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

Pray, repent, and give thanks for the forgiveness we share in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

 

• The Consequence of Disobedience

 

Genesis 3 then proceeds with the judgment of God upon each player in the narrative.

 

*To the serpent: cursed on his belly and eating dust. That is 3.14, then in 3.15 we have the reference to Jesus Christ who, when He comes, will crush the devil.

 

*To the woman: pain in childbirth. It is not that there would not have been any pain in the garden but that the pain will be multiplied. She will have an "urge" for the husband and he shall rule over her. This certainly offends modern sensibilities as now some women claim they can live without men altogether. In an age seeking "gender equality" the creation order of desire and rule is overturned. God's design is denied for the sake of no distinctions between male and female. This eventually lends itself to the massive gender confusion of our time which is a push toward things like non-binary or the other "alphabet soup" categories.

 

*To the man: because he did not fulfill his role as head of the relationship (listened and disobeyed), the ground is cursed and therefore, I have to work that much harder for a summer tomato!

The woman will suffer bringing life into the world and the man will suffer to bring bread into the world to sustain that life.

What can we make of verse 22 that "man has become like one of us"? The way of being like God is to know good and evil. That may mean that man now has the ability to determine for himself what is good and what is evil. This also means that man has the capacity to deny what God has said is good and what is evil. This leads to humanism, for instance, that we determine for ourselves what is good and what is bad. It may be a collective determination or it might be an individual determination. What one might consider good, another may think is evil. The point being that God's law and commands are no longer valid in determining right and wrong with those who think they know better.

This disobedience and its consequence has been passed down to all humanity. Only the promise of Genesis 3.15 gives hope. So Paul writes in Romans 5.19, "For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." Our righteousness is not from anything we have done, but solely because of what Christ has done on the cross and through the resurrection.

 

• From the Dust in the Image of God

 

Dennis Prager, Jewish commentator and creator of Prager U, who by the way needs our prayers as he had an accident that injured his back, says of Genesis 3.19, “to dust you shall return”. He writes, “This was God telling Adam that human beings will be the opposite of what the serpent promised they would be – ‘not like gods’ – but mere dust. But, of course, because we are created in God’s image, we are not merely dust. It is good for us to be constantly aware of both – when we get too arrogant, to remember we are dust; and when we feel low and unworthy, to remember that we are created in God’s image.” (p. 58, Genesis: God, Creation, and Destruction)

That is such a good remembrance and balance to our lives. When we think too highly of ourselves – you are nothing more than dust. When we think too lowly of ourselves – you are created in the image of God. To dust Adam and Eve will return, but the sentence that was deserved was not handed down right away. Adam and Eve lived on for a time. Grace abounds in Genesis, for they did not die, they suffered a curse or more pain, but not death, at least not immediately. The penalty for eating of the tree was death, but God still gives life and God shows His compassion and grace in that He takes away those ridiculous fig leaves and God makes new clothes, leather, no doubt! And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Imagine Adam wearing that leather jacket and Eve with her leather skirt! Adam and Eve made their first garments from fig leaves, but God, in His grace and mercy, steps it up with leather. The Lord made their cloths! Imagine that.

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians that will close out our message today. It is about our clothing using the metaphor of our bodies being a tent and the contrast between our physical earthly bodies and our heavenly bodies… “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 5.1-5).

Not found naked like Adam and Eve. Not found disobedient and ashamed. Not afraid. But we are further clothed in the Holy Spirit, forgiven, reconciled in Christ. This is the good news made possible in the gospel of Jesus Christ who lived and died that we might live, clothed in the guarantee of the Spirit. Amen and amen.