The Beginning of Trouble (Genesis 3:1-24)
This article is based on a talk given by David Couchman at Above Bar Church, Southampton, on Sunday 21st January 2007. It may be reproduced in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.
- In Canada, the ice shelves are only a tenth of the size they were a hundred years ago. Increasingly, we recognise that Global warming is a waking nightmare.
- You might have seen the news story: Tony Blair is in trouble because he will not give up overseas holidays that involve long-haul flights. We are told that his 'green credentials' (whatever they are) are suspect.
- About one in four of us will suffer from depression at some point.
- It is two hundred years this year since the slave trade was abolished. But today more than twelve million people are victims of forced labour - effectively they are slaves. Most are female, and many of them are young girls forced into prostitution.
As we look around at the world today, it is clear that things are not right.
Genesis chapter 1 tells us that God made a wonderful world for us to live in - a world that was just right in all kinds of ways.
Genesis 2 says that God made people to be like him, in a small way - to be intelligent, creative, communicating, and with the ability to make choices. The first people lived in harmony with themselves, with each other, with the natural world, and with God. So different from our world today.
Genesis 3 is the Bible's explanation for what has gone wrong. So let's look at this chapter, under three simple headings:
(1) The Temptation (v. 1-5)
At the beginning of Genesis chapter 3, we see that everything in the Garden is not lovely. Humanity has an enemy - described in this chapter as a snake that talks.
Verse 1:
The serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, 'You mustn't eat from any tree in the garden'?
How do you react to this story? If we are honest, it raises all kinds of questions. Are we really supposed to believe in a talking snake?
Unbelieving scholars say, 'Of course it isn't actually true. It's just an ancient myth to account for the evil in the world.'
But if it is not 'actually true,' then it does not 'actually' account for anything at all, does it?
The Bible always treats what happens in this chapter as a real event. The New Testament refers back to it as something that happened in history. For example, Paul says:
Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men... (Romans 5:12)
So the Bible intends us to read this as a true story, about things that happened, to real, specific, individual human beings. It is not just some sort of myth about how we got here from there.
Having said this, some of the things in the story are described in a figurative way. Vaughn Roberts, in 'God's Big Picture,' says this:
My own view, for what its worth, is that Genesis 3 describes an actual event but uses some symbolism as it does so.
For example, almost everyone understands that the serpent is not just a serpent. In some way, he represents Satan, the devil.
If you look at the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation shows the effects of Adam and Eve's sin being reversed finally. And it talks in a couple of places about the serpent. For example, Revelation 12:9 says:
The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
In Revelation, we recognise that the language is symbolic. But it is talking about the same character who appears in Genesis 3. So perhaps the language there is symbolic too.
We might like to know more about Satan, but the Bible does not go into a lot of detail.
What does the Bible tell us about Satan?
- He is a real being - not just a way of representing impersonal forces of evil.
- He is a created being - part of God's original creation, which was perfect. Because he is created, he is not equal with God - he knows a lot, but he does not know everything. He is powerful - but not all-powerful.
- He is a rebellious being. Somehow, he rebelled against God. There are hints of this in other places in the Bible, but it is not spelled out clearly. He hates God, hates God's people, hates everything God does, and wants to spoil it.
So the serpent is a symbol for Satan. Some of the other things in the story may also be symbols. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are probably symbols too. But - let me say this again - the fact that some of the things are symbols does not make the story a myth. The Bible treats this as real events happening to real people.
So what does the serpent do?
He distorts God's words.
In verse 1 he asks:
'Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?'
Of course, God had not said that they must not eat from any tree in the Garden. He only said they must not eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
But the serpent is not really asking a question at all. He is deliberately twisting what God said. The New Living Bible catches the sense of this well, when it translates this verse:
Really? Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit of the garden?
He distorts God's words.
He denies what God has promised.
Back in chapter 2 verse 17, God says 'when you eat of it you will surely die.'
But in verse 4, the serpent says 'You will not surely die...' Literally he says, 'Dying you shall not die.' He bluntly contradicts what God has said will happen.
He casts doubt on God's motives.
In verse 5 he says:
God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
The serpent is clearly out to make Eve think that God is not good, and that he does not love her - that he does not want what is best for her.
Sin always starts with doubting God's goodness. As long as you hold on to God's love and goodness, you will not sin.
God rules the world by his word. And this is precisely what the serpent challenges; God's word - by distortion, denial, and doubt.
This is still his strategy today. If you are a follower of Christ, you have a powerful enemy, who is out to mess up your life, and to spoil your relationship with God. And the way that he does this is to challenge what God has said through distortion, denial, and doubt. So in the New Testament, Jesus describes him as the 'father of lies.' (John 8:44)
So the serpent comes to Eve, and lies to her about what God has said, and about God's motives.
(2) The rebellion (v. 6-13)
Verse 6 says that Eve sees that the tree is good for food, and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom, and she eats its fruit. And she gives some to Adam, and he eats it too.
They did not have to do this. They were not forced to do it, or fated to do it, or doomed to do it. It was their free choice. In fact, they are the only people who have ever made a truly free choice - and they get it wrong. And we have all inherited the consequences of their decision.
It is the beginning of a whole world of trouble. The first human beings disobey God for the first time.
They believe the serpent's lies, and doubt God's words and distrust his goodness. They want to be independent from God. They want to run their own lives. They want to be like God, and so they rebel against him.
They seize at the knowledge of good and evil. And in one sense, they get what they take: they do find out the difference between good and evil.
What is the result? Their choice has affected the whole of human life ever since. How? Well, the effect of sin is always to cause separation.
It separates us from each other. The end of chapter 2 told us that Adam and Eve were naked, and they were not ashamed. They were innocent. But now, for the first time, they are conscious of being naked. Verse 7 says:
The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
What is going on here? They feel shame, and they feel vulnerability. They are beginning to be separated from each other.
People sometimes say that the first sin was sex. That is nonsense. God created men and women as sexual beings, and gave them to each other for a sexual relationship. That was part of the plan. There was nothing sinful about sex. The idea that there is something dirty and polluted about sex comes from the ancient Greeks. It does not come from the Bible.
If you are tempted to think sex is somehow unclean, I challenge you to find anywhere the Bible says that.
No, the problem was not sex. The problem was that they wanted to be independent from God.
And one result of their rebellion was that it separated the man and the woman.
And all the separations that we see between people today are a result of human rebellion, whether it is the separation that comes between individuals in the divorce courts, or the separation that comes between nations hating each other in the Middle East, or the separation of people traffickers treating other human beings as commodities. Sin separates us from each other.
Then sin separates us from God. In verses 8-11, they hide from him. They wanted to be independent, and they got what they wanted. They did not want what they got. Because now, for the first time, they are afraid of God. All the separation of humanity from God is a result of human rebellion.
If you look at verses 12-13, you see them passing the buck for what they have done, and blaming each other:
Adam tries to shift the blame onto Eve. He says:
'The woman… gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'
He even tries to shift the blame onto God:
'The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit and I ate it.'
In effect he says, 'It's your fault, God.' And Eve in turn tries to shift the blame onto the snake:
'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'
Isn't that just like us? Someone accuses us of doing something wrong. What do we do? We try to justify ourselves. We try to shift the blame onto someone else:
- It was my genes
- It was my parents
- It was my upbringing
- It was my education
- It was my inadequate income
In fact, anything except 'it was my fault.' The hardest thing we ever have to do is to say 'yes, I'm responsible.'
So Adam and Eve listen to the serpent, and disobey God. The immediate results are separation from each other, and from God, and a culture of blame-shifting.
Did it really happen?
Well, surely no-one can deny the reality and the presence of evil in the world today.
But we also recognize that it is evil: it is not right; it is not natural. things are not the way they should be.
But if the world is just a result of blind chance, why should things be any different from what we see? Why should we have a sense of justice - or injustice? Why should we think that some things are right, and some are wrong? Surely, if it is just blind chance, well - that is just the way things are?
Doesn't the Bible's account make sense of the world we live in? A world that was created good, but has now been spoiled - messed up by human rebellion.
(3) The aftermath (v. 14-24)
The curse
God pronounces a curse because of what they have done. For each of them - the serpent, the woman, the man - there are two parts to the curse:
The serpent (v. 14-15)
- It is cursed to go on its belly and to eat dirt: 'You will grovel in the dust as long as you live.' (New Living Translation)
- It is cursed to be at war with humanity: 'I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.'
The woman (v. 16)
- She is cursed to pain in childbirth: 'I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.'
- And she is cursed to be dominated by her husband: 'Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.'
Incidentally, if you are keen on the idea of male headship, please notice here that the way this works today is not the way God originally made things. It is a result of the curse.
The man (v. 17-19)
- The ground is cursed because of Adam, so that he will make his living from it by hard work. 'All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.' (New Living Translation)
- And he is cursed with death itself. 'By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.'
The curse works on the core areas of what makes us people - Eve is going to have pain in childbirth; Adam is going to have hard labour in his work.
'Cursed is the ground because of you...' All the frustration of hard physical labour is a result of God's judgment on their rebellion.
Just as sin separates us from each other, and from God, it also separates us from the natural world.
This is clear enough when we look at Global warming. Our greed, and our refusal to change our way of life, is spoiling the world our children will live in.
But we need to think about this a bit more: The Bible's picture is that the natural world itself has been thrown into disorder because of human rebellion. Even apart from Global warming, the world as we live in it today is not the way God originally made it.
So in the New Testament, Paul says this:
The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:20-22)
Things like volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis are all part of this disruption of nature. If Adam had not disobeyed God, and if God had not cursed the ground because of him, either things like this would not have happened at all, or if they did happen, they would not have devastated humanity the way they do. Sin separates us from the natural world.
Then sin separates us from ourselves.
- It separates us from ourselves psychologically - all the personal damage that we suffer - all the mental and emotional problems we have are a result of human rebellion.
- It separates us from ourselves physically, in disease and decay.
- Finally it separates us from ourselves in death. Adam has been made from the dust, and in the end he will return to the dust, as we all do.
So if you, or someone you love, suffers a serious physical or psychological illness, is this because of something sinful that you have done? No, it does not mean that.
It means that the whole human race has been spoiled by the results of sin. Suffering and death are part of our common experience, since Adam rebelled against God.
Eviction
They also come under God's judgment as he throws them out of the Garden in verses 22-24.
They are thrown out so that they will not be able to eat of the Tree of Life, and live for ever. So that they will not, in their state of rebellion against God, be able to enjoy the eternal life he planned for them.
Hold on to this thought about the Tree of Life, because we shall come back to it in a moment.
So in this chapter, we have seen that the first human beings are deceived about God, and disobey him. Because of this, they come under under his judgment - they are cursed by him, evicted from the garden, and condemned to death.
Their rebellion brings separation - from each other, from God, from the natural world, and from themselves.
And, as they say, the rest is history. The human story from the first murder (which comes in Genesis 4) to the killings on the news this morning, is just one long footnote to what happens here in Genesis chapter 3.
It is the beginning of trouble.
As we have looked at it so far, this story is totally negative.
Light in the Darkness
But there are a few tiny glimmers of light in this dark chapter:
(1) In verse 15 God says to the snake:
'your offspring and the woman's offspring will be enemies. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.'
The serpent's victory is not complete. There will be ongoing war between humanity and the serpent.
Bible scholars have always seen more to this than just that people will not like snakes very much. Is there a hint here that one day, there'll be someone - a single person - who will defeat the serpent, at the cost of being struck by the serpent? Genesis 3 just raises the question - it does not answer it. It takes the rest of the Bible to answer it.
(2) In verse 20 Adam names his wife Eve, because she will become the mother of everyone living. Although God has cursed them, and handed them over to death, this is not the end of the story. Life goes on, in the middle of death. There are going to be children. The human race will continue.
(3) In verse 21 God makes clothes for Adam and his wife, out of animal skins.
God sees their shame and vulnerability, and he does something to protect them, and to provide for them. He goes out to them not only in judgment, but also in mercy.
When they tried to cover themselves, they sewed leaves together. This obviously was not very effective, because God had to sort them out. When God covers them, he uses animal skins. Because of their sins, an animal has to die. Is it reading too much into the story to see here a hint of a sacrifice?
It is a tiny hint. A tiny glimmer of light. But it is there. One day, there is going to be a sacrifice that will deal with the problem of human sin. One day the curse is going to be reversed.
(4) In verse 24 they are evicted from the Garden. The way to the Tree of Life is barred by the cherubim with flaming swords. But the Tree is still there. It has not been destroyed. There is still hope for the future.
You remember how at the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we see the effects of the curse being reversed. Right at the end of the book of Revelation, almost the last words in the Bible, say this:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. (Revelation 22:1-3)
Yes, the story in this chapter of Genesis is horrible and negative. It is the beginning of trouble. But God still cares for the people he has made. Life will go on. There will be a sacrifice for sins. One day, someone will decisively strike the serpent's head. One day, the curse will be lifted, and the way to the Tree of Life will be open again.
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