Blaming God

[0:00] When we met last Wednesday, we discussed mankind disobeying God and entering into sin.

[0:18] ! Eve was deceived by the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[0:28] ! Adam, who was with her, made the deliberate decision to follow his wife and also ate.

[0:40] That's why we call it Adam's sin. As we saw, this plunged the human race into disobedience, sin, and all sorts of transgressions which are with us to this very day.

[0:54] At the appointed time when the Lord Jesus would walk with Adam in the Garden of Eden, we find Adam and his wife hiding from the Lord.

[1:09] And as I said last week, where do you go to hide from God? I don't know of any place in the universe that you can do that. We pick up in our study of selected scriptures in Genesis chapter 3 and in verse 8 and 9.

[1:26] And they, that's Adam and Eve, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

[1:36] And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

[1:53] Of course, the Lord knew exactly where Adam and Eve were at. You can't hide from him. But he gives Adam an opportunity to come clean by honesty.

[2:07] And we pick up the conversation in verse 10. And Adam's speaking, and he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.

[2:26] And God said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? Now, we don't know exactly why Adam and Eve didn't know they were naked.

[2:42] I know that a lot of people, theologians have said, they were probably enveloped in kind of a Shekinah glory. But the Bible doesn't really, it's not that explicit.

[2:54] But we see here the product of sin, which is something new for Adam and Eve. They've lost the desire to walk with God.

[3:08] Instead, Adam chooses the impossible route of hiding among the trees in the garden in a useless and impossible effort to hide his nakedness from the Lord.

[3:23] Again, Adam has the opportunity to come clean and be honest with the all-knowing God of the universe. So Adam responds to the Lord. The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.

[3:45] Now, we see here the depravity of man. Now that he's entered into sin and disobedience, the first thing he wants to do and he needs to do, he's got to blame someone for his predicament.

[4:00] He's got to level blame. And if you read that closely, he only mildly lays blame on his wife.

[4:12] He does give her some blame, but only mildly. But he goes all out laying blame on God. Again, he says, The woman you gave to be with me.

[4:27] Obviously, God gave him a defective model. If he'd been given a better wife, he would never have sinned. That's what's implied here.

[4:38] Therefore, most of the blame belongs to God. I don't think that will travel too far with the Lord. While preparing this lesson, I came up with a great book idea.

[4:52] I even chose a title. I want to call it Blaming God. I imagine there are hundreds of scriptures where men and women try to place the blame on God when something has gone awry.

[5:06] And if any of you want a copy, give me $25 in cash. I will try to remember who you are. And once the book is published, I will try to get you a copy. So the Lord looks over at the woman and He's got a question for her.

[5:24] He says to her, What is this you have done? Simple question. Eve, what did you do?

[5:35] And the woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate. That's the only question the Lord had for Eve.

[5:45] What did you do? The serpent deceived me. Was she honest? Yeah. She's telling the truth. The woman was honest. I'm like her husband. Satan, disguised as a serpent, did deceive her.

[6:03] So now the Lord turns His attention to the serpent. 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.

[6:18] On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat, all the days of your life. This represents the beginning process by which the serpent becomes a snake.

[6:34] And snakes are one of the most hated and dreaded creatures on earth. I hate them. There are snakes on my farm right now hibernating, but they're dreaming about what they're going to do to me this spring when I am able to walk around.

[6:55] They're just laying wait for me. Crawling around on his belly, the snake is stepped on by cattle and other beasts. And most people, like myself, have a great fear of snakes.

[7:08] I don't like live snakes. I don't like dead snakes. I don't even like sticks that look like snakes. It'll make you hurt yourself. If I see a snake on the road, dead or alive, it doesn't matter.

[7:21] I try to go around it in a car. I can just imagine that somehow the snake could get up into the undercarriage of the car and work his way into the passenger compartment.

[7:34] Now, Diane is not as afraid of snakes as I am. But if we see a tarantula crossing the road, she will lock the doors to the car. So the serpent was cursed to live out his life as a snake, crawl around on his belly and get stepped on and it says, and eat dust.

[7:56] Interesting phrase there. For generations, people tried to come up with some type of symbolism concerning the eating of dust.

[8:10] I mean, do snakes do that? And if so, why would they do that? Then a few decades ago, we started hearing from herpetologists. I hope I said that right.

[8:22] These are guys that research snakes, professors that teach about snakes. And they came up with a discovery. These herpetologists who study creeping animals.

[8:34] The herpetologists discovered that snakes crawl on their bellies and in so doing, they take in a small amount of dirt periodically, open their mouths and take it in.

[8:50] In addition to the Genesis passage, there's another verse in Micah, chapter 7, verse 16, the first part of 17. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might.

[9:01] They shall lay their hands on their mouths. Their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth.

[9:13] And once again, we have the situation where as more information has come to light, the Bible has been shown to be not only accurate, but accurate in minute detail.

[9:28] Snakes do deliberately and purposely eat and lick dust. Why in the world would they do that? There is an organ in the roof of a snake's mouth called Jacobson's organ.

[9:43] Now, I've never been that close to look at that. I'm reading this, but this helps the snake to smell in addition to what it smells with its nose.

[9:54] Its darting forked tongue samples bits of dust by picking them up on the points of the fork of the tongue, which it then presents to its matching pair of sensory organs inside its mouth.

[10:10] Once it has smelt them in this way, the tongue must be cleansed so the process can be repeated again. These scientists believe that snakes are doing this using their sense of smell to track small animals that's been by that area like a mouse or whatever and the snake wants to catch that and eat it.

[10:36] He's looking for evidence of food. There is also a theory that snakes somehow use the dirt or dust they take in to assist them in navigation.

[10:47] They're able to navigate that way. Bottom line is, serpents really do eat dust. The Bible's true once again. Look at the next verse in Genesis chapter 3.

[11:01] the Lord is still cursing the serpent, but actually He shifts. He shifts from 14 to 15 and actually He now is laying a curse on Satan himself who indwelt the serpent to deceive Eve.

[11:20] The Lord God says this, I will put enmity between you, that's Satan, and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

[11:35] He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. That's what God had to say to Satan.

[11:46] Now for the next portion of our study, I'm grateful to Dr. John Phillips. He spent most of his adult life at Moody in Chicago where he actually directed the Correspondent School, which is massive, by the way, international.

[11:59] He's now retired, but like most retired pastors, spends his time preaching and teaching. I know some guys like that, Willard. We have seen the curse of the snake, but in reality the curse went far beyond the curse reserved for snakes.

[12:19] The real and eternal curse was reserved for Satan who pulled all this off. And you know, there's something very interesting here.

[12:31] God never asked Satan a question. He didn't have to ask him any questions. God already knows the answer. So he doesn't ask Satan anything.

[12:43] And we also note that Satan was silent in the presence of God. He didn't have anything to say. And that's wise.

[12:57] In this passage, God judged Satan, found him guilty, and declared war upon him. That word enmity, which also means hatred, can mean war.

[13:13] There's a declaration of war here. We also see that Christ is going to bruise the head of Satan. And I thought, you know, that word bruise in most translations in English seems to me to be a little mild.

[13:31] So I looked it up in the Hebrew language. That's the language of the Old Testament. It is the Hebrew word shurath, meaning to overwhelm and crush.

[13:44] That's just a bit more violent, wouldn't you say? In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it is the Greek word theruo, meaning to break in pieces, crush, or shatter.

[14:01] That's what the Lord is going to do to Satan. That's what He's going to do to Satan. And part of it's already been done at the cross. The rest remains to be done at the end of the tribulation period.

[14:16] In this declaration of war, Adam and Eve hear the gospel message for the first time. The gospel is contained in that verse of Scripture.

[14:28] And that's what they're hearing. They heard the first promise and the first prophecy ever given in the Bible. It happened in the third chapter of Genesis.

[14:41] We had the first question in verse 1. Now we have the first promise and the first prophecy. prophecy. It was a prophecy that embraces both comings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[14:57] His first advent, which is the incarnation, when He came the first time. And this prophecy includes His return, which has not happened yet, but which we are waiting for with increasing expectancy, I believe, when we look around.

[15:14] Interestingly, the first coming of Christ is mentioned second, and the second coming of Christ is mentioned first in this passage. The triumph of Christ coming and establishing His kingdom outshines the first advent where He was tortured and murdered on the cross, but we know that it is only by the cross that ultimate victory could come.

[15:43] It's by His atoning sacrifice that we are all even here tonight. That's the glue that holds us all together. That He is our substitute based upon the atoning sacrifice, the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice of the Lord.

[16:01] I think Satan discovered something in verse 15. I think he finally figured out that he's been a little bit too clever. He's been too clever.

[16:13] Satan had fallen into an ambush that God prepared for him from the beginning. Satan was seeking to avenge himself upon God for having cast him out of heaven.

[16:31] You remember when he made the declaration, I'm going to be higher than the Most High God and God tossed him out? So he's going to avenge that, but by doing so, he has opened the way for God to settle the mystery of iniquity once and for all.

[16:51] Satan, this mystery of iniquity, Satan will rise in the end times by the permissive will of God. He will ultimately be defeated and cast into the lake of fire.

[17:07] Until then, Satan is being restrained by the presence of the Holy Spirit, which we find today in the true church. God gives the seeds of Satan's destruction in Genesis 3.15.

[17:22] that's what that verse is all about. Well, God next turns his attention to the woman. He says, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

[17:38] In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. Now, I wrote out this last, next section in the comfort of my study and now that I'm going to actually give it with my wife here, I have broken out into a sweat, but I'm going to try and pull this off anyway.

[18:01] If I'm not here next Wednesday or Sunday you'll understand. I was in the delivery room when our son Rob was born. In fact, the doctor was late and I almost delivered him.

[18:14] He was coming out. He wasn't going to wait for doctors or anybody else. Observe my wife there, I can testify that her pain was multiplied in childbearing.

[18:30] I observed her pain, her threat, screaming, and an overall, albeit temporary, deterioration of her language. Afterwards, she dangerously hemorrhaged, causing the doctor to tell us this needs to be the last of the Mohicans, which he was.

[18:48] I actually wanted five more, to which Diane said, I'm okay with that as long as you have them. And she has said that to me many times over the years. You're a really brave man or you're just not very smart.

[19:01] Both. So, I read this verse in the English Standard Version. I like the translation here from the Hebrew.

[19:16] It says, the woman's desire shall be contrary to her husband. Most other versions use words like this, your desire shall be for your husband.

[19:30] And I never could figure that out. Because that really kind of sounds good, but it's not the meaning of that passage. As a product of the fall of humanity, the roles of the man and woman ordained by God was thrown on its head.

[19:52] In many respects, the roles reversed. And we see that certainly in the secular world, the unsaved world. The headship of man ordained by God in creation is going to be replaced by tyranny.

[20:07] A war broke out between God and Satan. There would be conflict between the man and woman. These struggles between the man and woman would intensify as they each try to exercise their self-will.

[20:26] I married a woman without self-will. Marriage is designed as a life, and I tell them that on Monday night, every Monday. Marriage is designed as a lifelong relationship, but as a product of the fall into sin, it's going to take God's help to succeed.

[20:50] Every marriage needs the Lord to direct it, and that's Christian marriage. That's Christian marriage. In the world, husband will have trouble with his wife as she seeks to rule over him, and he will have trouble with sin as it seeks to rule over him as well.

[21:10] We battle sin every day, don't we guys? Every day. The only solution to the marriage problem is to base it on the teachings of the New Testament, and the greatest teaching in the New Testament is husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church.

[21:34] That's the greatest teaching on the marriage relationship. When we were new believers, we're laying in bed, she's reading a book, I'm reading the Bible, and I said, well, listen to this, wives, submit yourself to your husband.

[21:49] She said, it doesn't say that in there. I said, yeah, it does, I just read it to you. Let me see that. No, no, let me see that. So she gets her hands on it, and it says, wait a minute, it says here, husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church.

[22:04] I said, you do that, and I'll be more submissive. We're not quite there yet. As it is, there is more divorce among church members today than in the surrounding culture.

[22:20] Boy, what an indictment against the church. What an indictment against the church. I did not say among believing church members necessarily. So we have seen the serpent cursed.

[22:36] We've seen the woman receive a sentence of woe. Only Adam is left. We've got to get to Adam. Here's what God said to him.

[22:50] 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.

[23:01] 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.

[23:17] 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.

[23:29] why was Adam cursed? Because he listened to the voice of his wife instead of the voice of God.

[23:40] His wife gave a spoken word that was contrary to what God had already told Adam. Instead of listening to her and sinning he should have protected her from the serpent.

[23:54] He should have stepped up and protected her. And one writer I told you a few weeks ago has suggested Adam should have killed the serpent. He should have killed the serpent. But now we have the best part of the story.

[24:09] Verse 20 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.

[24:26] Then the Lord God said, Behold, a man has become like one of us and knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

[24:42] 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, that's a type of angel, and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

[25:05] What an amazing passage. Everything we just read in that passage was an act of grace on the part of the Lord.

[25:19] It may not seem like it to our finite minds, our fallen minds, but it was all grace, every bit of that. Adam called the woman Eve because she was the first mother of all the living.

[25:36] All of us in here have Eve as our great, great, keep going grandmother. All of us in here have her DNA, hers and Adam's, every one confession of faith.

[25:59] He said Eve is the mother of all living. God had pronounced sentence, a death sentence upon the human race. But he also declared that the woman's seed would bring salvation.

[26:16] Adam believed God and confessed his faith by calling his wife not the mother of the dying but the mother of the living. She's the mother of the living.

[26:30] That was an expression of Adam's faith in what God had said and it was instantly honored by God in heaven. What happened next had to be horrifying but also necessary in the presence of Adam and Eve.

[26:49] the Lord God, we call him by the New Testament name Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. It says the Lord God made garments of skins and clothed them.

[27:04] How did God do that? There in Eden, in paradise itself, blood was shed for the very first time.

[27:14] it would not be the last. The Bible flows red with blood from Genesis to Revelation.

[27:27] Adam and Eve must have been aghast at their sight. They've never seen death. They've never seen death. And they must have been aghast at this sight. they saw God take an innocent animal.

[27:44] An animal that did nothing wrong and it was taken in their place. They knew that. They'd been told that. They knew it.

[27:54] And they watched God slaughter that animal. And it bled. Blood was shed.

[28:10] God then took the skin of the animal and made appropriate coverings for Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness. They tried to hide their nakedness by sowing fig leaves.

[28:22] We said that last time. That's fig leaf religion. You can't come to God unless there's been a shedding of blood. And we come to Him through Christ who shed perfect blood, don't we?

[28:39] So here we have the first dramatic demonstration of the ultimate cost that's going to happen on Calvary. That's what this alludes to.

[28:51] Innocent animal in Genesis, innocent lamb on the cross. Our first parents saw the horrors and dreadfulness of sin.

[29:04] Mark this thought down. Sin costs. There's a cost to sin. Sin is a radical disease and it calls for a radical cure.

[29:17] sin. But grace didn't end there with the slaying of an innocent animal to cover Adam and Eve's sin, to bring them back into fellowship with him.

[29:27] It didn't end there. In another act of pure grace, God drove our parents out of the Garden of Eden. Well, how can that possibly be grace?

[29:38] Well, it is. He drove them out. in that garden, remember, stood the tree of life.

[29:50] If Adam and Eve, now in their fallen condition, had eaten from that tree, they would have lived forever in their sins, for eternity in their sins.

[30:06] they would have become like fallen angels, incapable of dying, and forever locked into the guilt and penalty of their sin.

[30:18] And every angel, fallen angel, which are now demons serving Satan, and there's multiple millions and perhaps billions of them, will one day end up in the lake of fire for eternity.

[30:33] They're locked in. If Adam and Eve had eaten, it would have been impossible to renew them to repentance.

[30:45] And God was not going to allow that to happen. He wouldn't do it. So He put them out of the garden, and they had no access to the tree of life, which would have condemned them.

[31:00] They'd have been condemned for eternity. God next put an armed guard around the entrance to the garden. The angel he used in that duty had a flaming sword, it turned, we don't know how that happens, and stood at the gate of Eden.

[31:17] Can you imagine Adam and Eve getting up at night? They looked toward Eden, they'd been kicked out, but they knew where it was at. They looked toward it, and they see that flaming sword.

[31:32] They could see it glowing in night. And they remember. That sword was a fitting symbol of God's wrath against sin.

[31:45] So when they would get up and they would see that flaming sword, they would remember. We hear reference to a sword much later in the New Testament when Joseph and Mary brought the Christ child to be dedicated in the temple, they were met by Simeon, a prophet of God.

[32:04] Remember him? Neat guy, real old. He said, now that I've looked at Jesus, the baby, eight days old, and he said, now I can depart in peace.

[32:16] I've seen your salvation. When do they circumcise Jewish boys on the eighth day? She knows. When you're, you know, when you cut yourself, your blood coagulates.

[32:31] It's a good thing or we'd bleed to death. I guess hemophiliacs have a problem with that when they cut themselves. But I've got cuts all over me. I'll show them to you. And it coagulates.

[32:44] Blood in a human body, the best time of coagulation in your whole life is day eight.

[32:55] So they're going to circumcise and there's going to be some blood there and it's going to coagulate on day eight. On day eight. So Simeon the prophet, he's there and he makes a prophecy over the baby.

[33:11] God, the Spirit has revealed him this is the Christ. This is the Messiah. And then he turns his attention to Mary, the mother of Jesus. And Simeon says, and a sword will pierce your soul.

[33:25] and a soul will pierce your soul. Takes it right back to Genesis, that sword. And it's going to pierce the very heart of Mary when she stands at the foot of the cross and watches her son give up his life for sinners.

[33:44] And that sword pierced Mary at Calvary when she saw her son die. Thank you.