The Fall of Man

This will be the fourth occasion this weekend. We've had an opportunity to hear him preach. So come, Pastor Mbewe, we hear you gladly tonight. Good evening, and please do turn with me to Genesis chapter three. Genesis and chapter three. When I brought you greetings this morning from Kabwara Baptist Church, I would have said that their thoughts are with us. I can't say that now, because I'm pretty sure they're enjoying a good night's rest in preparation for the labors of tomorrow. But I do want to say, my own word of thanks for the friendship, the fellowship, the hospitality that I have enjoyed while I've been with you this whole weekend. It's meant a lot to me in terms of the sense of settling down after the long journey and also just the knowledge that they are God's people here with whom we are united in many ways, that our doctrinal oneness also has found a practical oneness in terms of our desires to save the Lord according to his words. So I have been refreshed among you while I have been ministering here, and I trust that as I begin going to different places in Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in the next two weeks, that the time that I've spent here in many ways will have a severing effect upon everything else that lies ahead. We will read together this entire chapter, but to begin with, I just want us to read from verse 3 to verse 8. Verse 1 to verse 8. if we are there, Genesis and chapter 3. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. We will for now end our reading there. I mentioned Earlier on this morning concerning a series of messages I took back home on the 20th anniversary of my own ministry in our church, I mentioned the fact that it was a series that took us through our own doctrinal confession of faith. We were not really looking through the document as such. It was a regular exposition of scripture. but it was to give us a sense of the breadth of the important things that the Bible teaches us. One of those fundamental truths that we need to really come to a firm grasp of as Christians is that of the fall of man. Because in many ways, it answers the question, why is our world in the mess that it finds itself in? And that is fundamental to our usefulness in the world. Because in many ways, life on earth is remedial. You are fixing things. trying to make order out of chaos. And if you don't really appreciate the problem you have on your hands, you cannot fix it. In the medical situation, if I could use that as an example, you go before a doctor and you are complaining about some symptoms. The doctor does not treat the symptoms primarily. He has been trained to think through the symptoms to arrive at the fundamental disease. And having used all his diagnostic tools, and diagnostic training, he consequently arrives at what the real problem is and addresses it. Assuming he has arrived at the truth and has the appropriate medication, before long you are back into the fullness of health and consequently life is back to normal again. And that's really the way in which life is. We need to seriously, especially as Christians, come to terms with the fact of what is it that has gone wrong with the world. Why is humanity in such a moral, social, and spiritual mess, especially in the light of the scientific advancement that we have made as human beings. I mean, think in terms of the realm of transport. Previously, a former generation to have come from the heart of Africa to come over here would have taken a solid year. Today, I travel slightly over a day, and we say, wow, that's long. In the same way, think in terms of communication. Once upon a time in the days of Paul, you wrote your letter, gave it to somebody, and he traveled with it. to come and bring it to you for you to be able to read what was written. Today, you are in your home, you press a button, and in the same moment, well, almost halfway across the globe, your message has arrived. And of course, the other person is still complaining that it has taken long. There has been advancement, achievement, in that respect, we cannot doubt it. But when you speak about, for instance, basic interpersonal relationships, instead of speaking about progress, we all have to admit we have gone backwards. For instance, talk about the most intimate of all human relationships, marriage, a relationship that begins with, I love you and I love you too. And yet, we know that they lived happily ever after is meant for bedtime stories and not for life as it often occurs within the four walls of our homes. Why can't we live happily ever after? Why should so many of these relationships end, not only in the divorce courts, but often times with one party murdered by the very person who once said, I love you. Why should we have so many security gadgets to look after our properties? Why can't our children be out there and just enjoy themselves freely without being snatched by individuals and in the process abused terribly? All this protection that we have round about us is not from wild animals, wolves and lions. It is from fellow human beings. And I could multiply examples. The kind of security features, for instance, we have with respect to our money. Did God make us like this? Have we been like this all along as human beings? Now, unless we have a solid answer to that question, we are going to simply be frustrated. If I could use an example that is closer to home, we will be trying to purify a stream by pouring in all kinds of chemical without realizing that the corruption, the poison in this stream is upstream. That's where we need to deal with the situation once and for all. And so here we are, as Christians, asking ourselves the question, what is really wrong with us? The passage that we have read together is the most foundational with respect to answering this question. The Bible takes us to the beginning of human history and it explains to us that when God made us, he made us perfect. Adam and Eve had no flaw whatsoever when they first came from the hands of the living God. God used to come down in the cool of the evening to have fellowship with them. as we notice from the passage later on specifically when we will be reading that this time when he did come they ran away well in fact we read it in verse 8 they actually ran away from him prior to that it was a moment of loving fellowship anyone who reads this account that God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day with just a little bit of imagination appreciates that it's a romantic ambience that is being painted there that there was an atmosphere of love Like two lovers going out in the garden in the cool of the evening to spend some precious time together. That's the way it once was. And yet, as we've noticed in this account, this time there was a running away from God. What went wrong? Well, the story is as we have read it in this passage, that when God made Adam, and out of that made Eve, He entered into a covenant agreement with them, and more specifically with Adam, who was the federal head of his people, the representative head of humanity. The agreement amounted to this, that he was free to enjoy the whole of God's garden. He was to work it, to look after it, to manage God's world as it were, on God's behalf, as God's regent. However, God was still the final authority and therefore there was one tree he was not allowed to eat from as a reminder that he is not the ultimate head the ultimate Lord and authority was still God himself if he did not do that God was to bless him with a life eternal. If he disobeyed, he was then to experience the judgment of God through death. Well, we know the story. Eve was seduced by the serpent through whom Satan was working Eve seduced her husband, Adam, who also disobeyed God, and the result of that was the immediate fall from that original righteousness, the immediate fall from fellowship with God. And immediately, the situation completely changed. That perfect person, or perfect couple, living in a perfect world, relating to a perfect God, that vision of life that our souls long after, that was no more. Innocence. was completely lost. Completely. There lies the beginning of our trouble. And we need to realize, therefore, that our trouble, and let's get this very clearly, especially as Christians, our trouble is not the party that's presently ruling our country, whether it's Republicans or do you call them conservatives here? We've got different parties compared to us in Zambia. It is not males or females, as is often the case with our feminist movement. It is not black. or whites. It's not the colonialist powers who have messed everything up. It is not bankers and their greed. It's not those people over there It is sin entered the world, and death through sin. And as a result, we all died. We need to recognize this, that our trouble is not a species of human beings, or some people with a bad background, our trouble is that we are all born sinners. Let's think about this a little more by asking the question, what is the effect of this event that we just read together? What is it that changed? Now thankfully, as we read further, it becomes clear. The first is that fellowship between human beings and God was destroyed. that where there was peace, tranquility, love and joy, you now have enmity. It's very clear from that passage we read. Verse 8, And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife, Heed themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Those of you who are married will know this. When you are with your friend, your spouse, and you are getting what in Zambia we call penalty answers, you ask a question and just hear, yes, no, yes, no, you soon say no, excuse me. What's the problem? Because you know, that's not the way friends relate. Something must have gone wrong between the last time we were together and now. Now this was more than just a yes-no answer. It was Adam and Eve scampering for cover. Surely there's something wrong. That's the first effect we need to come to terms with. It's the fact that sin has built within us, in corrupting us, an enmity towards God. That even those who still go to church on Sunday, go worshipping a God of their own making, not the true God of the Bible. Explain to them all that God has revealed of himself in the whole of scripture, and they will say, we don't like that. That may be your God, but it's certainly not ours. There's an enmity towards God that Romans 8, for instance, talks about. That's what atheism is all about. It's not that these so-called scientists have, in an objective, unbiased way, looked at scientific data and arrived at the conclusion, there is no Creator, don't let anyone cheat you. What they've basically tried to do is to take a gun and shoot God in the back. In other words, they're basically saying we don't want him. If we can find a way to murder him, we'll do it very, very quickly. That's the first change. But it's not the only one. It's the most fundamental one. And after that, a lot of things happen. The other is where there was friendship and intimacy between us at a horizontal level. That is destroyed by selfishness. Let's read that together from verse 9. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." That statement by Job, rather by Adam, is the exact opposite. of the way he described his wife in the second chapter. In the second chapter, when God brings Eve to him, he breaks out in a song. You know, the kind of emotion that has been the inspiration of so many songs across history. Here is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." Well, now, listen to the language. You are saying, God, you are asking me what the problem is? Well, I will tell you. Is this woman you dumped here with me? She is the cause of all my problems. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I would be happier if she hadn't come into my life! And that's the story across history. It's sin that has changed us on the inside. consequently we blame everybody else for our wars. Now that's bad enough in chapter 3 but by the time we go to chapter 4 it's only getting worse. The first two brothers in the Bible, one murders another. What for? Nothing more than simply this word, jealousy. That's all. The brother offers his sacrifice. It's accepted by God. He offers his sacrifice. It's rejected by God. He won't have it. He kills his brother. the first two brothers on earth one kills the other and even the one who survives lives the rest of his life like a fugitive fearing for his life whoever finds me will kill me now isn't that our world today? you don't need a string of 10 degrees to recognize that here is the story behind today's story. It's the effect of the fall. The failure therefore to love my neighbor as I love myself. That my neighbor's happiness is as important as my happiness. Another effect of this is the coming in of actual death. Actual death. Suffering and death perhaps put together. I will go all the way to verse 16 for now. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow. There it is. Suffering. Sorrow. And your conception. In pain. There we have it. You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam he said, because you have hidden the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, Cursed is the ground for your sake, in toil there it is again, painful labor. You shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you." Again he is speaking about suffering. Thorns and thistles pierce you and consequently you suffer, experience pain. and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. There is death, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." And isn't that what chapter five is all about? Apart from the two brothers, one killing the other, by the time you get to chapter five, it's like a chorus. So-and-so had so many children, and after that, he died. The mangoes' children, so-and-so had so many children, and after that, he died. And among those children, there was so-and-so who had so many children after that. He died. And you can't miss it. He died. He died. He died. He died. And that is what life is since the fall. It is a life where we have to wrestle with this fact. Death is inevitable. It wasn't simply a consequence of the fall as a logical or physical consequence. It is the judgment of God. He said, the day you eat of this, you shall die. They died spiritually and in due season died physically. Again, I ask, here we are as Christians, face to face with the realities of life, the enmity of neighbors, weapons, those who ought to be friends, stabbing us in the back. harming brother and sister and children. Does that reality take us back to this chapter? To see the ugliness of the consequence of the fall? Or do we simply blacklist some individuals as bad people? and try and insulate ourselves from those bad people. And in the meantime, try to develop a little heaven on earth. We need to come to terms with this. Men and women are totally deprived. Sin has affected every aspect of their beings. Their minds, their hearts and affections, their wills are captivated by And consequently, we can see the effect of this. Well, I've already hinted at the fact that God has responded to all this. He hasn't simply sat back. No. He has judged Adam and Eve, and in judging them, He has also judged us as a result. Let's quickly go to the last verse in this chapter. The Bible says there, So he drove out the man and placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. To begin with, there were those pronouncements, cursed are you, cursed is the ground because of you, and so on, and you shall return to the dust. God has responded in judgment upon us as human beings. And as though that was not enough, He finally kicks Adam and Eve out of this place of utopia, this perfect garden that He had created, so that they may now suffer the consequence of sin. What this obviously means is that it is not in our power to reverse this. God placing a sherobeam with a flaming sword is basically saying, no access back without me. For us who are Christians, therefore, that's an important statement. To expect human beings to improve their world and themselves is to expect human beings to lift themselves by their bootlesses. It's impossible. Science may make us travel at the speed of light, but while we are together traveling by the speed of light, we are fighting each other. Sin is still working in us. It doesn't matter what we create. It will soon be infected. I mean, look at the creation of the internet. What a wonderful tool! But those of us who are parents know that we have to guard our children many times from it. Why? Because everything evil has already infested it. Created by us. And I sometimes think that Our newspapers need to change the way in which they report crimes. Instead of saying thieves broke into, say, First National Bank or something, they should say, some of us broke into First National Bank. In other words, it's not like there are some creatures called thieves. No, it's us. You know what the problem is with our world? I'll tell you. Go and look in the mirror. That's the problem. It's us as human beings under the wrath of Almighty God. He has, as it were, put his foot on our necks and is saying, until the worship of God is again central, unless what Adam did in the negative direction is done in the positive direction, forget a world of peace and joy. a world that our souls long after. In other words, God must save or we perish forever. Now this is important, very quickly, if I can apply this to one example. Many times as pastors, people come to us because they've got marriage problems. And they will point fingers at each other, you know, she did this, or he did that, or she's doing this, or he's doing this, and so on. And these people are godless. They're not interested in God at all. What they're interested in is to be happy together. And it's very easy for us to think that we can give them five steps to a happy marriage without God. We are cheating ourselves. The reality here is this. God is saying, you want utopia? I've put a flaming sword in between. you kicked me out of your lives, you must pay for it. Unless I come back in, that life is out of question. And those of us who are Christians need to face our communities Those who are in a state of suffering because of the consequence of sin with this reality, God is not an optional extra to life and living. Very quickly, what are some of the things that we therefore learn from this? First of all, It is the fact that sin might look nice at a distance, but in the end, it never pays. It may be attractive. Remember the way it was to Eve. This fruit was nice to the eye. It looks like in eating it, you will gain wisdom and everything else. In the process, you forget that God said, don't. And consequently you eat for all these benefits and in the end you lose what you have. Sin is like that. We must never be cheated into thinking that the grass is greener across the fence, away from godliness. It isn't. In the end we lose more than we actually gain. In many ways, even for those of us who are Christians, sin is like the story of the dog with a bone in its mouth about to cross a river. Looking into the stream, the dog sees another dog with a better bone. It throws away its bone and grabs the bone of the dog it's seeing in the river, well, in actual fact, it has lost its bone. That's the way sin is. Let's never be deceived. that there is a better life across the fence. God is a kill joy. He's denying us something that's going to be more pleasurable, a better life, and so on. That's the deceit of the evil one. We are suffering as we are doing today because Eve believed that lie. Let's not make it worse for ourselves. Another lesson we learn from this is that sin has so corrupted us that we cannot change ourselves. Society may come up with all kinds of institutions to try and make the world a better place. Let's recognize this fact. that they are just medicating symptoms, that's all. They cannot deal with the disease of human sin. They are just managing a situation. Ultimately, God must serve. And therefore, in all our working situation, Let us never make gospel work secondary, so that it becomes any other business, because that is humanity's only hope. And when a Christian is saying, look, I'm too busy, I'm too busy, I'm too busy, you need to shake him awake. Because you are becoming too busy for that which ultimately is the panacea, the answer to the world's crisis. And thank God that He's not just a God of wrath, but He's also a God of love. He has sent a Saviour in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to take away God's wrath. In this story, we have something of that already. When we are told in verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." We know from the rest of God's special revelation that He is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is coming into the world in order to save His people. that if we repent of our sins and trust in Him, He will save us from sin. He will change us from the inside out. Where there was hatred, there will be love. Where there was idolatry, there will be the true worship of God. And where there was to be hell, there will be heaven instead. That's our only And that's the reason why, as Christians, while others are rejoicing in a newfound solution to this, that and the other, we look at it with skepticism. We know it's merely trying to hold a temperature down. It's not handling the real disease. And as often as we're able to, we pump all that we have into gospel work, because we know that Jesus Christ alone is able to save sinners. May we really believe this account and live by it. Amen. Let's pray. Eternal God in heaven, we thank you that where as the world gropes around in darkness, You have given us a full and sufficient answer to the question, why is our world in its present mess? Lord, while the world pretends to be educated by a multiplication of degrees, and yet proves completely impotent in dealing with interpersonal conflict and tragedy. Thank you that the explanation in scripture enables us to see why they are completely bankrupt in doing so. We pray, O God, that in the light of the gospel, your answer to the tragedy of Genesis 3, you might help us with joy to stand on the anthills and mountains of our world, proclaiming the answer, Christ Jesus came into the world, sinners to save. O Lord, help us to be the vehicles through which you will serve and usher a host of your redeemed into a glorious utopia for all eternity. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.