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Genesis 3; Colossians 3:1-4, 9-10
3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You1 shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,2 she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool3 of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”4 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 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.”
14 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.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring5 and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 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 to6 your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
17 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;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 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.”
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.7 21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 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—” 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 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.
[1] 3:1
[2] 3:6
[3] 3:8
[4] 3:9
[5] 3:15
[6] 3:16
[7] 3:20
(ESV)
3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your1 life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
[1] 3:4
(ESV)
9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self1 with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
[1] 3:9
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Well, good morning. We are continuing our sermon series in Genesis chapter 3 today. Genesis chapter 3. If you look in your worship guide, you'll see that we have a passage from Colossians chapter 3 printed there. And and that's because we see a connecting point.
Jeffrey Heine:We see a corollary to what we're gonna be studying in Genesis chapter 3 together. And so we're gonna begin by reading that as we, dive into Genesis chapter 3. So look with me. Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 through 4, 9 through 10. And let us listen carefully for this is God's word.
Jeffrey Heine:If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Verse 9.
Jeffrey Heine:Do not lie to one another seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Oh, God. You alone are God.
Jeffrey Heine:And we come to you in all humility and all confidence because of Jesus. Help us, Spirit, to behold this morning, the greatness and graciousness of God. Help us to see and know the brokenness of the fall and the joy of our salvation in Christ. Meet us in your word, oh, Lord, and change us. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray these things in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Of all the wild animals that the creator had made, the serpent was by far the craftiest, subtle and shrewd. I'm not sure how often animals spoke in those days, But the woman, Eve, did not seem surprised when a snake began speaking, saying, so God said you must not eat from any tree in the garden. But before the serpent can finish, the woman interrupts and corrects the serpent.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, no. We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden. And Eve is right. God had created trees good for food in the garden. We read of that in chapter 2.
Jeffrey Heine:Genesis 2 verse 8. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Jeffrey Heine:Eve goes on to clarify for the serpent that while they could eat from the trees, God did tell us, she said, we must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and we must not touch it, lest we die. Now, Eve is mostly accurate here. We read in verse 15 of chapter 2, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
Jeffrey Heine:It's the you must not touch it part. That's not what God had said. And to be honest, there's not a clear reason as to why Eve says this additional command here. Maybe Adam and Eve had added this prohibition as a reminder to themselves not to go near that tree, Or maybe they were confused about the rules in general because, and bear with this, they didn't know good and evil, which we can assume that not knowing good and evil would imply that a rule, this negative prohibitive command, would be very strange. In light of all the things that God had commanded so far in his goodness saying, be fruitful and multiply, eat of the earth, steward the land, tend the garden.
Jeffrey Heine:All of these commands to do good in the garden, and yet a single command, to not do something. For us, sure, we understand rules. We get that rules are set up to help us navigate this constant barrage of ethical conundrums, in in which we try to discern what is right and what is wrong here. Most of the news, especially the Sunday news that's on today, there will be endless rounds, likely fruitless of back and forth arguments of what is right and what is wrong. And then they switch.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is right and this is wrong. But Adam and Eve, they could not conceive of the concept of the idea of evil. What would it even mean to disobey God? The philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once said, if a lion could talk, we couldn't understand him. And what he means by this is that a lion's frame of reference, the way that the lion sees the world and experiences the world, even if we had the same language, we couldn't understand one another.
Jeffrey Heine:And the language of disobedience is a foreign tongue for Adam and Eve. We find them in the perfect paradise of the garden, so far removed from sin and death. They only know God and his goodness, And only one prohibition is given in all of creation. If we eat of the tree, Eve says, we will die. There's something about that tree, and they decide not to even go near it.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe that's why Adam and Eve furthered the prohibition. Don't even touch it. So the crafty enemy pivots to a new line of argument. And the enemy still uses this today. And that is to belittle the consequences of disobedience.
Jeffrey Heine:You will not die, the serpent says to the woman. God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The serpent says, bad things won't happen. Not at all. In fact, good things will happen.
Jeffrey Heine:And surely, you don't want to miss out on good things. See, this type of temptation solicits fear. It's the fear of missing out, the fear of not drawing the marrow from the bone, not having what others have, not experiencing all that the world has to offer, the fear that God is not giving us all we really need. That is, in short, what the serpent is accusing God of doing, withholding good from Adam and Eve. God knows that their eyes will be open, the serpent says.
Jeffrey Heine:You'll be like him. You'll know good and evil. And he's withholding that good from you. It's this fear that God doesn't want what's best for us. And a bunch of what the serpent is saying is actually true.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's often how temptation works in our lives. Right? Half truths, twisted truths, lies with shades and shadows of reality. The serpent is right. In that, God does know that if they disobey him, their eyes will be open to know good and evil.
Jeffrey Heine:It's also true that in having that knowledge, in that manner, they would be like God. But this knowledge of good and evil is like it's like human language in the lion's mouth. Adam and Eve will not know what to do with this knowledge, because they are not equal with God. No more than your reflection in a mirror is equal to you. Adam and Eve are creatures made out of the very dirt they are standing upon.
Jeffrey Heine:And really, this is one of the most important lessons for us in the Genesis creation story. And it's this, you are not God. So many of the troubles that we face day in day out are because we miss that point. The servants lie is that they will not die. And that's wrapped in the truth that their eyes would be opened.
Jeffrey Heine:They would know good and evil. This is a knowledge which God knows, but it won't make them equal to God. They won't know good and evil in the manner he knows good and evil. Yes, their eyes will be open, but they will fall and they will surely die. 1st, they will die spiritually on that very day.
Jeffrey Heine:And then, ultimately, their physical bodies will surrender to death and return to the ground from which they were made. The serpent's venomous lies are working. Eve is intrigued. She has to go to this tree and check it out for herself. So off the woman goes with the man in tow.
Jeffrey Heine:And they walk to the middle of the garden where the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grows. And there they stood, the man and the woman in the middle of paradise looking at the forbidden tree. Eve saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food. It was pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. The tree didn't look bad and the fruit didn't look rotten or harmful.
Jeffrey Heine:And we we should learn from this, the lesson that that the things that can devastate us most profoundly, physically, emotionally, spiritually, they don't always look rotten or dangerous or wicked. Sometimes they even look life giving. And then Eve breaks her own rule. She touches the tree. Another lesson for us.
Jeffrey Heine:Eve's action serves as an uncomfortable reminder that so often we don't even keep our own rules, let alone God's commands. We don't meet our own standards of goodness, Let alone God's perfect standards. Eve took the fruit. She ate it. Adam watched closely.
Jeffrey Heine:Eve did not fall dead. When she touched the tree, she did not fall dead. When she pulled off its fruit, she did not fall dead when she took and ate. The serpent must have been right, and God was wrong. Then, in her first recorded act as helper to her husband, Adam's divinely fashioned, perfectly fitted helpmate, held out the fruit of disobedience and death.
Jeffrey Heine:Adam took and he ate. And together, the first husband and wife standing in the middle of perfect garden where every need was met, every provision provided. And for the first time, humanity took and ate, tasting disobedience and death. It would take 1,000 of years. And the steadfast greatness of God for those words, take and eat, to become words of life and not death.
Jeffrey Heine:What the serpent had said came true. Their eyes were terrifyingly opened. The knowledge of good and evil raged into their being, body and soul. For the first time, humanity knew good and evil, but that did not mean that they knew the difference between the 2. Like a deep sea diver, unintentionally rocketing up to the water's surface, their equilibrium is shot.
Jeffrey Heine:Adam and Eve don't know top from bottom, left from right, truth from lies. When I was a teenager in Kentucky, there's a guy at my church named Carey who was a professional skydiver. He was a videographer. He would jump and film stunts, And he got a gig in the mid nineties with a new MTV show called Road Rules. Some fans out there.
Jeffrey Heine:His, his job was to have the camera on his helmet and film the cast skydiving. What Carey did not know was that someone had sabotaged the parachute pack that he put on. Someone had intentionally jammed the first primary chute, and then with a hook knife, cut the cords of one side of the backup parachute. Unbelievably, both Carrie and the video recording survived the crash. I remember the first time I watched it.
Jeffrey Heine:In it, you see at the start some excited tan twenty somethings getting ready to tandem jump. But when it's time to pull the chutes, sheer terror unfolds. Kerry pulls the first shoot. Nothing happens. He's gaining speed.
Jeffrey Heine:The helmet camera looks up and down, up and down. He goes for the reserve shoot and it flies straight up into the air, flapping in the wind. He reaches for the cut cables climbing to form a canopy, whatever he could to slow down. It's not working, and he starts to spin faster and faster, spiraling between blue sky and green grass flashing back and forth. And you see the field getting closer and closer until you hear Cary say, oh, god.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm going to die. And suddenly, the video goes to black and white fuzz when the helmet camera is destroyed as Carrie hits the ground at 75 miles an hour. All at once, hundreds of bones shatter, but he survived the fall. And we turn our attention back to Adam and Eve standing in the middle of the garden, sabotaged, shattered, half alive. They survived the fall.
Jeffrey Heine:Physically alive, but spiritually dead. Far from looking like gods, they are a shadow of their former selves. And in their fall, they smashed into the chaos of knowing good and evil, and they possess no compass to know the difference between the 2. The prophet Isaiah describes this kind of chaos, Saying, woe to them that call evil good and good evil. That put darkness for light and light for darkness.
Jeffrey Heine:That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. What God had warned came true. The absolute horrors of fear, shame, guilt, things they had never felt before, ravaged Eve and Adam. And of all the things to reveal this brokenness first, they see that they are without clothes as they always have been, But now they feel ashamed. Why?
Jeffrey Heine:The fall did not pervert their nakedness. The fall projected wickedness onto what had always been good. The fall perverted their eyes. Like a child trying to clumsily clean up their own mess, and in doing so, only making more of a mess, Adam and Eve sew together fig leaves and make coverings for themselves. And then the man and wife, they hear a sound.
Jeffrey Heine:It's a sound of their creator walking around in his creation. God was walking in the garden of the cool of the day. Immediately, they hide from their maker among the trees of the garden, but why hide? Hadn't they made clothes? Yes.
Jeffrey Heine:They had made, clothes, these fig leaves to hide from one another, but now they have to hide their fig leaves from god. Their shame made them hide from one another. It's their fear that makes them hide from God, fear that he's going to punish them. Shame begets shame. Fear begets fear, and hiding begets hiding.
Jeffrey Heine:The Lord God calls out, where are you? Of course, God knew where Adam was. So why does he ask? I think we need to see this as a picture of God's grace. God is coaxing the man and the woman out of their hiding.
Jeffrey Heine:He's not rushing at them with his fury to punish them. He extends his patient grace that they would leave their hiding. Adam answers, we heard you in the garden. We were afraid because we are naked. So we hid.
Jeffrey Heine:God says, who told you that you were naked? Because he knew it had to come from the outside. Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? As the consequences of disobedience begin to set in, those words of God's command not to do something are starting to make sense. Now they can see just how far their actions were from what is truly good.
Jeffrey Heine:God was not holding out on them by no means. Adam and Eve are beginning to see what they have done. So this is disobedience. The man struggles and says, the woman you put here with me, the perfect helper you fashioned just for me, she gave me some of the fruit from the tree and I ate it. Then the lord said to the woman, what have you done?
Jeffrey Heine:The woman, only now beginning to understand what she had done, says, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. These aren't just excuses. This isn't just blame shifting. This is the truth of what happened. The servant deceived Eve.
Jeffrey Heine:Eve persuaded Adam. They both disobeyed. They both admit it. Each of them confessing, I ate it. They're both equally held responsible for their sin against the Lord's command.
Jeffrey Heine:And what happens next is swift judgment. In reverse order of Adam pointing to Eve, Eve pointing to the serpent, God begins his judgment of curses with the serpent, working in order of their rebellion. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
Jeffrey Heine:He will crush your head. You will strike his heel. God curses the serpent and gives these physical punishments, cursed above all animals, eating dust, crawling on his belly. But the last part the last part is foreboding for the serpent. God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
Jeffrey Heine:He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. Descendant of the serpent will be at odds with one another. Serpents are human, every descendant of the serpent will be at odds with one another. Serpents are still shrewd and many are dangerous. But the curse narrows in this last line, moving from the general offspring to the singular he.
Jeffrey Heine:It's almost like God is not talking about snakes and people anymore. He will crush your head. You will strike his heel. One will wound. The other will kill.
Jeffrey Heine:In church doctrine, this is known as the protoevangelium, which means first gospel. This first glimmer of the promise of a coming savior. God says a descendant of Eve will take on the ancient tempter who coaxed the man and the woman into sin and death. This child of Eve will be wounded by the tempter, but the promised one will deal the fatal blow against the ancient serpent, the devil. God then turns to the woman.
Jeffrey Heine:I will make your pains and labor severe with painful labor. You will give birth to children. He continues, your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. This is the first time we see this kind of language in the creation story, one that emphasizes difference more than sameness, where strife of authority between the man and the woman is highlighted. It occurs here after the fall in the pronouncement of curses.
Jeffrey Heine:The desire that God is talking about here is not a loving desire. It's a sinful yearning to devour. When the woman acts in sin, she will desire to overpower and suppress the man. And in his sin, he will seek to rule and suppress the woman. Neither of these things are as they should be.
Jeffrey Heine:They were not made to be like this, but in sin became like this. Then to Adam, God says, because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful labor, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
Jeffrey Heine: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, God says, and to dust you will return. Like the curse to Eve, painful labor will fill the days of man. Thorns will infest the ground.
Jeffrey Heine:Toil will come to the work of the hands. And through sweat and pain, the earth will yield its sustenance. And lastly, the death sentence is pronounced. They will return to the ground that they were taken out of because they are dust, and to dust they will return. Death has come into creation.
Jeffrey Heine:Eve listened to the serpent. Adam listened to Eve. No one listened to God. God cursed the life of the serpent. He cursed the labor of Eve and Adam.
Jeffrey Heine:And because of their spiritual sin, they will face a physical death. And next, the Lord made a provision of garments made out of skin for Adam and Eve. And God himself clothed them. And then we see the triune God, father, son, and holy spirit, talking to himself saying, the man has now become like one of us in knowing now knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and also take from the tree of life and eat and live forever.
Jeffrey Heine:Meaning, he cannot eat of that tree because he would live eternally in this state of chaos and sin, dead spiritually. So the Lord God, exiled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which God had made them. And the man and the woman began their began their life in exile. Exiled from paradise, the only home they had known. And they now enter a bleak world of sin, death, and confusion, not even knowing what is right or wrong.
Jeffrey Heine:That's the story of the fall of humanity, what GK Chesterton called the only church doctrine that has proof everywhere you look. Brokenness, pain, suffering, and death. So what now? Oh, until we yield and realize that this has to do with us, This story will only be a folktale long passed down through the generations, like the Iliad or Aesop's fables. But the story of the fall has to do with you.
Jeffrey Heine:This story has something to say about your life, about your pain, your sin, your suffering, your sorrow. It even has something to say about how one day, you will die, And the people who care about you will grieve, and they will miss you, and they will lay your body down into the earth from which you were created. And you will become to them but a memory. And you will be remembered as long as there are people who have memory of you. But then, someday, the last person that remembers you will be gone too.
Jeffrey Heine:What then? What happens then? This is the stark reality of the fall. Rebellion against God is destructive. Why didn't God give Adam and Eve a second chance?
Jeffrey Heine:Why didn't he let them stay in the garden, give them one more shot? Isn't he the God of grace and mercy? Well, I think 2 things really matter there. 1st, God is not merely the God of second chances. It sounds poetic and nice, but it's not accurate.
Jeffrey Heine:Because in light of the fall, second chances are really just another opportunity to disobey. God is after more than just offering another chance. He's transforming us in Christ. In the garden, the damage of the disobedience was done, not just for Adam and Eve, but for all humanity and all creation. The rebellion and destruction could not be reversed and it could not be overlooked.
Jeffrey Heine:Why not? Because Adam and Eve did die that day in the garden. They died spiritually. They were dead in their sins and trespasses in which they walked. They followed the prince of the power of the air.
Jeffrey Heine:They became children of wrath. And because they died spiritually, so did we. All humanity after them, likewise, spiritually dead. No second chance could undo that damage done, which leads to the second thing. Adam and Eve's exile from paradise to live in a broken world until their death was actually God's grace and mercy at work.
Jeffrey Heine:And let's consider how that's possible. Look back at verse 22, if you've got Genesis 3 open. 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.
Jeffrey Heine:God is showing grace to humanity. Since they died spiritually, they must die physically. So that one day in Christ, they could be raised to life spiritually and physically forever. The fall so killed our spiritual being and so defiled our physical being. That physical death and exile from the garden is God's grace to us.
Jeffrey Heine:Because otherwise, we would live in sin eternally. Exalt from the garden and the consequences of death, it's the only way that could lead us to resurrected life in Christ. The pain of labor, like that pain of labor, death is the pain we must endure for life to come in Christ. Adam and Eve's banishment set into motion the long road of salvation that leads all the way to redemption and resurrection in Jesus for you. Because of their sin, they were exiled from the garden.
Jeffrey Heine:They also began this long journey by which the creator God himself would enter into his own creation in human form, form just like that out of the dirt that he created, to breathe the air he made, to walk the grassy hills that he spoke into existence, to become the very sin humanity created, and the curse on our behalf. Not so we could get some cheap second chance to try harder to be good enough to earn God's grace or favor. Instead, he does this so we can have resurrected life eternal with God, to bring him back, back to God. But instead, instead of getting what we deserve, this grace comes and meets us in our darkest moments. Can you see that it's always been god's grace and that it always will be?
Jeffrey Heine:And we we can see God's redeeming grace in Christ playing out here in Colossians chapter 3, which we began with. This corollary, connected reading to Genesis 3. Look with me in your worship guide. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Jeffrey Heine:For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put off that old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. The apostle Paul is saying that men and women who have been raised with Christ seek what is of Christ. He's describing people who are no longer spiritually dead, but because of Christ, they have been brought to new life, spiritually alive.
Jeffrey Heine:And if you are no longer spiritually dead, if you no longer bear the first consequence of the fall of spiritual deadness, it's because you died and were raised with Christ. And Paul says, your life is now hidden with Christ and God. Think about that. When the reality of good and evil shattered Adam and Eve, the most immediate recognizable brokenness was sexual. They see their nakedness and they hide.
Jeffrey Heine:They hide from their most intimate friend, one another. And ever since that first shattering and splintering, we are prone to hiding, hiding from God, hiding from one another, even hiding from ourselves. And Paul says that you who trust in Christ, you are now spiritually alive. You no longer have to hide from God, because you are hidden in God. You are hidden in Him forever.
Jeffrey Heine:You could not be more accepted, more welcomed, more received, more affirmed. You are hidden with Christ in God himself, and nothing can change that. Jesus addresses our fear and our hiding by hiding us in God. Paul also speaks of putting off that old self, what he calls in other letters, the old man. He's talking about Adam, that spiritually dead self, like the old useless fig leaves.
Jeffrey Heine:We take off the old spiritually dead self and put on the new self. We put on Christ and his righteousness, the spiritually alive self. And we live to God laying down our fruitless rebellion, And we put on the righteousness of Jesus. We put on the finished garment of his righteousness and wear it like it's always been ours because in Christ, it is. And it will be forever.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus addresses our shame and our nakedness and clothes us with himself. And lastly, Paul speaks of knowledge. It was an unholy pursuit of destructive knowledge that led Adam and Eve to disobey God. And Paul says that we are hidden and clothed in Christ. And in this new self, we are renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Jeffrey Heine:What does that mean? It means that our minds are renewed in holy knowledge. It's a knowledge that bears the goodness and greatness and graciousness of our creator, God. It's the holy knowledge that is derived from reflecting our creator, which renews us and makes us whole. It restores us and leads us away from disobedience and shame to obedience and delight.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus addresses our guilt and our need for holy knowledge by renewing us in his truth by his spirit. There's a great deal that I do not know and do not understand about the story of the fall of humanity in Genesis 3. But I agree with Chesterton that I see the effects of the fall all around me and inside of me. I resonate too well with the words of the apostle Paul when he lamented, I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Jeffrey Heine:For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. This is the fall, not just around us, but inside us in our flesh, spiritually alive in Christ and physically living out the effects of the fall in the flesh. I see the fall in me in my own disobedience of God. I see the fall around me in the hurt and sickness, the pain, the sorrow in our shattered world. The long story of redemption is one of great rejoicing and great sorrow.
Jeffrey Heine:We cannot just live in the happy rejoicing and pretend that the sorrow is not real, not present, not endeavoring to devour us. See, we read those words of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, when he says, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, death, where is your victory? And I remember hearing these words read to me at graveside services and looking around at the people grieving and weeping and saying, here is the sting, here in us.
Jeffrey Heine:And it doesn't look like victory. It looks like death. We don't need to pretend like we don't experience the pains, the horrific stinging of sin and death, because we do. Paul was pointing to a victory that is coming. We feel the vicious fangs of death.
Jeffrey Heine:We hurt. We sorrow. We cry out. Death does not seem like it's God's mercy to us. But he will not let us live in sin and the consequences of sin forever.
Jeffrey Heine:That would be a fate worse than death. He loves you too much to leave you in the fall. And it is because of his steadfast love that he will raise you up in Christ. And that's why in the midst of these necessary curses, a child of Eve was promised. One who would feel the fangs of death himself as the ancient serpent would bite his heel.
Jeffrey Heine:But also promised is that this child of Eve would crush the ancient deceiver of old once and for all, chasing out the darkness of night forever and making his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. This child of Eve has come, and he will come again. And so we pray, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Come and bring us again to be with you in the paradise of your presence forever. Let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, Lord, by your spirit, help us to look upon Jesus, to see him, to trust him, to turn from our sin and repentance and just look to Jesus, our savior and our redeemer. Lord, help us to come out of our hiding and to find ourselves hidden in Christ. Help us to believe, oh, Lord. We pray these things in the name of Christ, our king. Amen.