What Happened?

Sermon Summary:

What happened in the Garden of Eden wasn’t just about eating forbidden fruit—it was about the catastrophic fracturing of relationships at every level. Genesis 3 reveals how sin didn’t merely introduce guilt into human experience; it fundamentally damaged our connection with God, with each other, and even with ourselves. When we examine this ancient story through the lens of relationships rather than just morality, we discover something profound: shame entered the world for the first time, causing Adam and Eve to hide from God and cover themselves. Blame became humanity’s default response, with Adam pointing to Eve and Eve pointing to the serpent—a pattern we still see in our marriages, families, and communities today. The judgment pronounced on the woman reveals that domination would replace partnership, a tragic prophecy fulfilled throughout history in domestic violence and abuse. And ultimately, separation became our reality—expelled from God’s presence, alienated from each other, and estranged from the flourishing life we were designed to live. Yet this isn’t where the story ends. The good news woven throughout Scripture is that God is in the restoration business. He’s calling us back to authentic relationships marked by vulnerability instead of shame, accountability instead of blame, partnership instead of domination, and reconciliation instead of separation. When we live according to God’s design for relationships, we become agents of healing in a broken world.

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Sermon Points:

Key Takeaways:

• God designed humanity to flourish together in intimate, harmonious relationships with Him, each other, and creation
• Genesis 3 represents “Paradise Lost”—the damage to humanity’s fundamental relationship with God
• Israel’s theology focused on mourning the loss of God’s presence and attempting to recreate sacred space through worship practices
• Sin introduced four cascading relational problems: shame, blame, domination, and separation
• Shame causes isolation from God and others, though appropriate guilt over sin is healthy
• Blame reflects humanity’s unwillingness to accept responsibility and accountability in relationships
• Domination perverted God’s design for men and women to walk side-by-side as equals, leading to abuse and violence
• Separation from God and each other became the human condition after the Fall
• Satan continues to twist God’s word by asking “Did God really say…?” to undermine obedience
• God desires to restore all relationships and will ultimately bring complete restoration in the new creation
• The world needs God’s people to act like God’s people by living fully into healthy, God-honoring relationships

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Scripture References:

• Genesis 3:1-24 (primary focus)
• Genesis 1-2 (foundational context)
• Romans 3:23
• Romans 5 (sin entering through one man)
• Romans 8 (creation groaning for redemption)
• Gospel of John (Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener)

Stories:

• The pastor’s experience at Dollar Steak Night with college students, arriving late and finding Dollar Chicken Night instead
• Dr. David Garland’s seminary teaching method of preaching Old Testament sermons every Friday to ensure students would learn to preach from the Old Testament
• The pastor’s observation of senior boys tearing a door off its hinges at youth camp and trying to blame it on the door falling spontaneously
• The pastor’s PhD dissertation research interviewing Southern Baptist Convention leaders and showing them a Hagar the Horrible cartoon about blame
• Two Hagar the Horrible cartoon illustrations about blame and refusing to accept responsibility
• Mary Magdalene mistaking the resurrected Jesus for a gardener in the Gospel of John, with the theological insight that “it turns out He is”—Jesus came to show us a garden is in our future

Sermon Transcript:

Well, thank you Michael and Worship Ministry for leading us today in worship. Thank you Jay Lynn for that testimony about Dollar Steak Night. I, I made it to Dollar Steak Night, but I was running a little bit late. So by the time I got there, it was dollar chicken night. And but it’s all good. All good. But it was a sweet time to be with all these college students.

Well, you know, a lot happens in a week. Doesn’t it? A lot is taking place in this old world since I last stood in this pulpit. And, it’s amazing what all can occur in a short amount of time. So, that said, I’d like to lead us in a prayer as we reflect on this past week in particular. Let’s pray together. Dear father, thank you for another Lord’s day where we can gather together as your people and worship, fellowship, and study your word.

We thank you for your presence here and your love for us. As we gather this day. We confess the heaviness we feel as we reflect upon what we see happening across the landscape of our world. This past week has been marked by so many expressions of hatred and violence. As our nation mourned once again the tragic attacks of 911.

We also were saddened by yet another school shooting and an assassination on a college campus in Utah. Lord have mercy. We also have recently learned of a senseless murder of a young refugee from Ukraine in our country here in North Carolina, as we continue to witness the fallout of the war in her own country. We also continue to watch as wars and armed conflicts wreak havoc in places like the Middle East and Central Africa, Nigeria, Myanmar and so many other places in our world.

We pray for peace to prevail, suffering to end, and humanitarian aid to be rendered and normalcy to return to these broken places in our world. Again, Lord have mercy. Today, for our nation, we pray for an end to the hatred, the vitriol, the violence, and the lust for vengeance that all seem to be common fare nowadays. We ask, Lord, that you intervene in ways that only you can to restore a sense of decorum in our public spaces, and for grace to abound in our private conversations with each other.

Lord, we love our country. We’re saddened by the polarization that we witness across our communities. The anger constantly expressed on social media, and the temptation to vilify those who happen to hold opinions and perspectives other than our own. We’re weary of the tension across our nation, the ongoing divisiveness, the unwillingness to truly listen to each other, and often the absolute disregard for honoring basic human dignity in our fellow citizens.

Again, Lord have mercy. We know that your grief is deeper than ours. We know that you see the brokenness of your creation more clearly than we ever could, and it saddens you. We also believe there is a balm in Gilead that can heal our sin sick. So we believe that your love is the answer and the antidote to our struggles.

We know there’s power in the life giving message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We know that the gospel can bring about transformation of people’s hearts and minds. We know that the gospel can bring life out of death. Hope where there is no hope. Strength where there’s weakness and healing. Where there’s brokenness. We know the gospel can bring peace in the midst of conflict.

Grace to replace retribution, restoration, and relationships that seem beyond mending, softness to hardened hearts, and love that both counteracts and replaces hatred. And so we ask that somehow the power, the hope, and the light of your gospel would permeate the dark places of our society. We ask you to bring healing, peace, grace, justice, love, and compassion to our communities and neighborhoods.

We ask you to bring renewal to our churches and revival to our land. And so we ask that the power of the gospel will be alive in us. Indeed, through us. May we be harbingers of hope, purveyors of peace, ambassadors of love, and ministers of reconciliation. We come before you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And we humbly ask, Lord, have mercy. Amen and amen.

Well, as I look across our nation and the events of our world, it just reminds me of how important our topic is. Because God has designed his creation and people to flourish. In fact, he’s designed us to flourish together. And that is the heart of our church right now. As you know, this year has given to that study what it means to be rooted in Christ.

And we’re going to continue this conversation for the next couple of years. In fact, we’re going to invite you to participate even more fully later this fall as we’re going to engage in a a survey that has been built by the team from flourishing in the church. And I look forward to sharing that with you and learning from the results that we receive.

And you know that each season of this year, we have tried to explore a different facet of flourishing. And for the fall, we are spending this time talking about our close social relationships. And our theme is it’s not good to be alone. You know that one of the domains currently being researched in the Global Flourishing study is close social relationships.

Those relationships that build context for our lives, that add texture to our lives, if you will. And you remember those of you who were part of our church back in January, we participated in the Global Flourishing study. Just as an introduction, we we took the human flourishing measure and we asked you, as followers of Jesus, to answer questions to, self evaluate your own flourishing based upon the questions given to us in the flourishing measure with regard to close social relationships, here are the two questions.

Write yourself on a scale of 0 to 10. I’m content with my friendships and relationships. And the second one, my relationships are as satisfying as I would want them to be. That’s the introduction and introduction to this conversation. So with that said, here’s what I want us to do this morning in this series that we started last Sunday on relationships, I shared with you all that there will be eight sermons in this series.

This is the second one, and the first two are theological reflections. And then the next six will address various aspects of relationships and the kinds of relationships we have. So with that said, I invite you to think with me this morning about this question. What happened in the text is Genesis three. Now you might be saying, now wait a minute.

We’ve already heard that sermon. We heard it about a month or so ago in the other series. And that’s true. We had another sermon entitled What Happened from Genesis three. But if you’ll remember, what we did in that series is we looked at Genesis three through the lens of mental health. What I want us to do today is look at Genesis three through the lens of relationships.

What do we learn about relationships from what happened in Genesis three? And so Genesis one, two, and three are just foundational to us as believers. Those first three pages share with us so much about God’s intentions and what’s happened to his great plan. Sometimes we get caught up in some interesting conversations. When we read Genesis one and two, we get sidetracked.

We want to know, how long did this take? Is this a real story? Are the days mentioned in Genesis one? Are they 24 hour days or are they epics? And what happened to the dinosaurs? When did they come and disappear? And why are they all in Glen Rose, Texas, for some strange reason. I mean, what happened?

And we get drawn into these conversations, and it’s challenging because the Old Testament was written so many years ago and it’s written in Hebrew, and sometimes the Hebrew language is not as precise as we would like for it to be. And so we get captivated by these questions about evolution and trying to reconcile science and what the Scripture teaches.

Here’s what I would say about all that. As much as I attention as I have given to all of that through the years and the study that I have engaged in trying to understand the teachings of evolution and biological science and discovery, here’s what I would say. As a as a Christian, as a theologian, when you finished page two of Genesis, okay, just Genesis one and two.

Here’s one way for us to think about it. God’s purposes are in place. That’s the real heart of the story. What God intended has now become a reality, and he has populated his earth with human beings who are to be image bearers of his, and we are to represent him in His creation. Humans were designed uniquely by God to serve him, to serve each other, to tend to his creation.

In Genesis two ends in absolute perfection and innocence. These two original creatures, naked, unashamed, in harmony with the Lord, with each other, and with God’s design for them. The question is, what happened? Well, that story is shared in Genesis three. So I want you to look at it with me this morning and again through the lens of relationships, what happened to relationships as a result of Genesis three?

So let’s look at it. Verse one. Now 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 must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.

You will certainly you will not certainly die. The serpent said to the woman, For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then 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. And the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from the man?

Said the woman you put here with me? She gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.

Well, this morning, as I said, I want us to reflect on this text under the conversation of relationships, under that theme, if you will. There are many ways that Genesis three has been described and depicted in theological literature ever since this happened. Sometimes it’s just referred to as the fall of man. Sometimes it’s referred to poetically as Paradise Lost.

So let’s use that image in our conversation today. Paradise Lost will begin here in Genesis three. We read the account of how humanity’s fundamental relationship, our relationship with God, was damaged. When you read Genesis one and God created, everything that is in the Scripture tells us that, behold, it’s good, very good. And the Bible says, on the seventh day God rested, and he blessed that day.

Now that’s a little hard for you and I to read that through our cultural lenses, because the way we read that, we think, well, I guess God was tired. He needed to break as if God would get tired. That’s not really the point. What is being communicated to us is, is that God is Lord over time and space, and now that his creative activity has come to an end, everything is in order and he is now enthroned on his cosmos, if you will.

And so, as the psalmist depicts it, he’s enthroned in heaven, and the earth is his footstool. It doesn’t mean that he’s tired. It means that he now is enthroned and in place. The function and the structure of creation are now in order, and all is good. And so humans are now in that sacred space in Genesis two that God has designed and created, and they are serving him.

They’re serving each other. They’re serving his purpose. They’re intimately connected to each other and to him. Now, two of my favorite Old Testament commentators, one of them is Derek Kidd, or the other is John Walton. Those two men have some wonderful insights into the Old Testament, and John Walton points out that when you look at Israel’s theology, not not in the New Testament theology, but Israel’s theology, Israel struggled with Genesis three and gave an interpretation of Genesis three that I think is worthy of our consideration today.

Here’s what he says about that in his commentary on Genesis in Israel. While there was undoubtedly a recognition of the inherent nature of sin, the biggest problem of the fall was not concentrated in the change in human nature or the heart condition, but in the loss of access to the presence of God and the reduced ability to participate in the blessing.

What Doctor Walton is saying is, is that when Israel looks at this story from an Old Testament theological view, what they mourn is the loss of the very presence of God with his people. It doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in sin. Of course they do. But the Old Testament perspective is a little bit different than what’s going to further be explored in the New Testament.

And we need to give us some consideration, because, you know, the Old Testament is the Word of God. When I was in seminary, I took Old Testament from Doctor David Garland, and it was a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday class, 8:00 every morning and on Fridays. Doctor Garland didn’t lecture. He preached a sermon from the Old Testament and the reason he did that throughout the year, he told us, he said, I’m afraid you all are going to graduate from seminary and never preach a sermon from the Old Testament.

I’m going to show you how to do it. And he was really good at it. So thinking about this text from the Israel perspective, from a Jewish theological perspective, here’s what they’re mourning the loss of the presence of God. So they tried to find it throughout their history. Well, how did they do that? Well, they constructed sacred spaces.

The world, the cosmos was God’s original sacred space, the Garden of Eden that’s been lost. And so what does Israel do? Well, Israel first built a tabernacle and then that tabernacle. Guess what you had at the very the very heart of the tabernacle, you have what was called the Holy of Holies, the sacred space where you would meet God.

However, there was also a sacred time. You could meet God just any time you had. You could only make your way into the Holy of Holies on special days, and only holy people who were purified could actually go into the Holy of Holies on behalf of all of Israel. And then, as you made your way out from the outer circle, if you will, the inner circle, rather of the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle or the temple.

Later, you finally make your way to the people, and the people trusted their leaders to bring all of them into the presence of God. So what was lost is what they tried to regain in their worship practices. Does that make sense? Both a theological and an architectural expression of recreating holy space and holy time. Since God is Lord over space and time.

And that is how the Jews would have viewed this story. However, we know that we have a fuller understanding of that. And so with that said, let’s think a little more about Paradise Lost. Genesis three provides the narrative that undergirds the Christian theological view regarding the pervasive effects of sin on all of humanity. Because here’s what you and I do as Christians.

We read and study our Old Testament as we should, but we put on our New Testament glasses and the New Testament the testimony of the the life and ministry of Jesus, his death, burial and resurrection, and the truths of the gospel and the theology of the New Testament is now the lens through which we read our Old Testament.

And we know that there is more to it than just the loss of the presence of being in the presence of God. Here’s what we learn from a New Testament perspective. After we read the narratives of the Old Testament, we come to grips with the grand story of the great plan of redemption, and we fully grasp what happened.

Sin has affected everybody and everything. My other favorite commentator on Genesis, Derek Kettner, says this I gave you all this quote last time we looked at Genesis three. Let me give it to you again, because it’s one of my favorite statements about Genesis three three kinds of disorder. According to Doctor Kettner, covering the greater part of human suffering make their germinal appearance in this chapter in personal relations, in the spiritual realm where we’re going to focus today on relations, personal relationships, and on the physical plane.

This multiple disarray from one aspect is punishment pronounced by God, from another is the plain outcome of his anarchy. Leaderless, the choir of creation can only grind on in discord. One of my all time favorite sentences. In other words, human beings have abandoned their role in overseeing God’s creation, and they have exerted their independence from God. That’s what happens in the Garden of Eden.

They now believe they can be independent from God and craft their own future and rule their own world. And what human beings are going to discover is, though their dependency on God actually increases because of their failure, and that becomes the human story. We’re going to need the New Testament to help us understand all that, Paul, to help us, the Apostle Paul, will tell us in Romans five that sin entered the world through one man, in death, through sin, and in and in this way death came to all people because everybody’s sin.

Paul is undergirded that in Romans three verse 23, everybody has sinned and fallen short of God’s expectation and God’s desire and God’s plan and God’s glory, all that God had planned because of our sinfulness. So God’s plan for humanity to bear his image, to serve his interest, to tend to his creation, to serve alongside one another in harmony and intimacy, to honor the sacredness of space and time, to live purposefully in his presence, in harmony with him, has been damaged because of what happened in Genesis three.

Now let’s talk about that a little more directly. Are you all still with me? Because here’s what’s happened. Here’s what’s about to unfold in this story. It’s a cascading story where things start to just appear and represent the fallenness of humanity. And we’re just going to chronicle them things like shame and blame and domination and separation. All of those now will cascade forward because of what happened here in the Garden of Eden.

So let’s talk about each one of those quickly. Think about it like this Paradise Lost. Genesis three recounts how sin leads to shame. If you still have your Bibles open, let’s look at it. Look at verse seven. So they have taken the fruit. Both Eve and Adam. Verse seven says, the eyes of both of them were opened now, and they realized they were naked, and they were now ashamed.

Now the largest leaves in the Middle East in the ancient world were fig leaves. So they took fig leaves and made clothing for themselves to cover up their shame. Now let’s be careful here for just a second, because Adam and Eve both are ashamed. Look at verse ten when God says. He asks him where are you? And Adam says, well, we knew we were naked.

We’ve covered ourselves and we’re hiding. They were ashamed. So let’s be careful here, because sin should bring some level of guilt and shame. My mama, I can hear it right now. I have two older brothers. I can hear her saying this to all three of us. You should be ashamed of yourselves. She mostly said that to my two brothers.

But the thing is, occasionally I got it. Of course sin brings shame. It should bring us guilt. We acknowledge that we’ve done something wrong. Here’s what’s significant about this particular instance, though. This is the first one first time. In other words, there’s the implication that it never had to show up on planet Earth. But with sin comes shame. And so the story shows us shame will be with us and shame will escalate to damaging proportions in the history of humanity. And shame leads us to isolate ourselves from both God and each other and that’s why it can be so damaging in relationships. If you remember that original design. They were naked and unashamed, but now shame has shown up and it will leave its mark. Not only that, in Paradise Lost, Genesis three recounts how sin lays the blame.

It’s fascinating how quickly that happens. Look at verse nine when God says, so where are you? And Adam said, well, I heard you. So we’re hiding. We’re naked. And God says, who told you were naked? Did you all eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil? From a theological perspective, once they did that, they experienced both good and evil in the sense that they experienced.

They came to the knowledge of evil because they experienced it. They came to the knowledge of good because they missed it. Both became a reality for them. And so God says, did you eat from that tree? Look at verse 12. And the man said, yes, Lord, and I’m truly sorry for what we have done. No, that is not what the text this I want you to look at what it says.

Did you all eat from the tree? Did you eat from the tree? And Adam said, that woman. You know, I was just here minding my own business, hanging out with the animals, just chilling in the Garden of Eden. But you had to give me her. And now look. Okay, after the first sermon, one of my church members came up to me and said, so, was Adam blaming Eve or God?

That’s a provocative question. So he looks at Eve and he says, so what have you done? And she says, that serpent that you put in here deceived me. Now, every parent in this room, you know, this conversation, who did this right here? I don’t know, man. I just walked in and my shelf just fell off the wall. I’m not sure how it happened.

It’s crazy. I’ve never climbed on it. One time in my whole life. Interesting. I remember one time I was at youth camp and I saw the the senior boys tear a door off the hinge and they stuck it back up there. They didn’t think I saw them, and me and Barry pulled up in front of that, cabin and went to open that door, and the door fell off.

And one of the kids said, doctor, wow, you’re a beast. I said, yeah, I got it. Yeah. What? Any of you kids, by the way? They were all in the first service, but, What is it? Well, let me tell you what it is. It’s is somehow the uncanny ability to accept no responsibility, to embrace no accountability, to always accuse somebody else for what’s happened. Years ago, I was working on my PhD at Southwestern Seminary, and I wrote my dissertation on the controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention. That was raging at the time.

And I interviewed two of the key leaders, actually three two of them in particular, who had helped to lead this fundamentalist effort that I believe had wreaked havoc in our convention. And when I got to the end of my scholarly questions that I had because of my research, I then had just a private conversation with one of them, and I brought him a cartoon that I’d clip from the Sunday newspaper of Hagar the Horrible.

Any of y’all remember Hagar the Horrible, the marauding Viking? And in this Sunday morning cartoon, as you make your way through the various frames, there’s this massive battle and all of a sudden you get to the end and Hagar is standing there with the leader of the other army, and it’s just strewn with carnage, and they’re both pointing at each other.

And they said this. Well, he started it.

And I showed that to this leader. And I said, it almost doesn’t matter who started it. Look at what’s happened. There’s just something about an unwillingness to accept responsibility, right. To always point the finger somewhere else. And I would contend with you all after pastoring for a long time. Relationships struggle so often because we don’t want to be held accountable for our actions, and we want to shift responsibility to somebody else.

I have another favorite, Hagar the Horrible, where the two guys are standing there, Hagar and his, counterpart, they’re both beaten to a pulp and they’re both pointing at each other and Hagar says, well, after I hit him first, he hit me back and he started it. Well, you and I, in relationships, if they’re going to be healthy and there’s going to be a path forward, we have to acknowledge whatever role we play in the shortcomings of that relationship.

Amen. It’s not easy. But it’s a necessary step. Sadly, Paradise Lost Genesis three recounts how sin leads to domination. You see, God had a plan, but his plan has been directly affected by sin. Man and woman created in God’s image. The Bible says in Genesis one a little more information. In Genesis two, the woman is created from the man’s side.

What a poetic statement. Not from underneath the sole of his feet, but from a side. The imagery is that of all side by side. They have roles to play, both incredibly important honoring the differences of men and women, but also acknowledging the equal roles that they play in creation. And they are to live in this intimate relationship, deeply connected, in harmony with each other and with God.

But I want you to notice what happens in verse 16, in chapter three. Again, if you have your Bibles, open a little complex passage in Hebrew, and I’m certainly no Hebrew scholar, but I’ve done my homework. So after all this unfolds, God speaks a word of judgment, first with the serpent, but then it says this to the woman, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe.

With painful labor you’ll give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. Now some very interesting text. Some have asked the question, what does that mean? That women had no pain in labor prior to this judgment? That’s not really what this text teaches. That’s not actually even the point in my opinion.

As a matter of fact, the real challenge is found at the beginning and the end of the statement because he said, I’ll make your pains in childbearing as a reference to conception, not to the actual birth of the child. The labor is referring to the birth of the child. So here’s what God seems to be saying in this text.

I’m going to plant inside of women a desire, not necessarily every individual woman will live this out, but in general, throughout women there’ll be a desire to be fruitful, to bear children. The only way this is going to be possible is to be in partnership with your husband. You will do this together, and so you’ll have a desire for this.

But you can’t do it by yourself. Neither can he. So there’s a unique partnership that’s being struck here. But now because of your sinfulness, there’s going to be pain in that. There’s actually even going to be pain in your desire for it, because in its fulfillment, what’s going to happen is there’s going to be brokenness now and this husband for whom you have desire is now going to be tempted to dominate you and rule over you rather than walk by your side.

He’s going to have the temptation now to dominate you. It’s a sad statement. It is a prophetic judgment that has come true throughout history. I don’t think I need to really illustrate it, do I? But men have been guilty of dominating not only their own wives, but everybody else’s wife. Sometimes ruling over them and sometimes even claiming they have the biblical authority to do it.

In fact, I’m shocked when I look at my work, my country. Today, I’ve been doing some research, and statistics vary, but just in general, would you believe that somewhere around 10 million cases of domestic violence are reported every year in our nation?

Did you all hear me? 10 million instances of domestic violence, overwhelmingly male on female. Do you know that? According to the statistics I’ve read, 93% of every woman murdered in America is murdered by a man that they know. 63% of the women that are murdered in America are murdered by their male partner.

Can I get any sadder? Here’s an estate that God has created to be holy.

And now it’s in shambles, filled with violence. And I realize that’s the extreme. So let’s back up from there. It’s not just murder. Granted, that’s egregious. We all know that. But let’s pull it back some how many instances of abuse, emotional abuse and trauma are experienced by women, by men who dominate them rather than walk along their side.

In other words, the brokenness in our world can be traced back to a prophetic judgment that was pronounced at the very beginning. In other words, it’s as old as humanity. It’s a sad story. And then, if that’s not sad enough, one other Paradise Lost Genesis three recounts how sin leads to separation. The separation in the story is symbolic in some ways symbolically represented.

Adam and Eve put fig leaves on. Now God looks at them and says, okay, that’s not going to work. Because what’s about to happen to you is I’m about to release you into the wild, and you’re going to leave the security of the garden. Fig leaves won’t be enough. So God fashions clothing for them animal skins. Now, some people like to read backwards into the story and say, well, here’s an example of a blood sacrifice for sin.

I would caution us against that. I do believe that that there’s blood sacrifice taught throughout the Old Testament, and certainly culminates in the ministry of Jesus in his death on the cross. Of course, I believe that, but I don’t believe that’s the point here. What I believe is happening here is God extending grace to Adam and Eve, because he knows he’s about to expel them from the safety of the garden.

They need better protection, and he’s providing it for them now. It does come at the cost of an animal that’s had to sacrifice its skin. So now blood is being spilled in the Garden of Eden, unnecessarily so once again, a sad story, but an example of God’s grace toward them. But it’s more than just a symbolic separation. If you still have your Bibles open, look at the end of chapter three, verse 24. He drove the man out.

And then he placed at the edge of the garden cherubim, these holy warriors, these angelic beings, in other words, entry here is forbidden. Now I want to make sure you hear the good news. The good news is, is that one day the Lord Jesus is going to return and this garden will reappear for all of us. There’s going to be a great restoration one day.

There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and God’s going to restore everything according to his glory and his plan even better than we could ever imagine. That’s where we’re headed. He sent his own son to show us it was possible. It’s one of the things I love in the Gospel of John. When Mary Magdalene sees Jesus in the eye after he’s been resurrected from the dead and she thinks he’s the gardener.

Do you remember that story? It turns out he is. He came back to show us a garden is in our future, but we got a long way to go before we get to that. And there’s been a whole lot of brokenness on this side of it. Genesis three just tells us the beginning of it. So now human beings have been separated from God and this brokenness is now felt across the entire spectrum of humanity, so much so that even creation groans for its day of redemption.

According to Romans eight and Satan loves it. He just does. He loves to twist God’s Word to God. Really? Did God really say that? And then he misquoted God. Then Eve misquoted God. Then he takes advantage of Eve’s misquoting, and he just meanders all the way through it and pulls her and Adam alongside with him. He still does that.

He still says, Does God the God really say that? You say it to you, God really say, love your neighbor as yourself? I didn’t really mean that. That’s just a a saying, you know, to put in a piece of art and hang it in your house. Did he really say, be kind, tenderhearted toward one another, forgiving each other as God in Christ has forgiven you?

Did he really say, keep meeting together and stimulate one another toward good deeds? Did he really say, wives, respect your husbands?

Well, he’s never met my husband. Did he really say greater love has no one than this than to lay down his life for his friends? Did he really, really say I mean it, God, or I love your wife as Christ loves the church? Well, he never met my wife. Did he really say this? Command? And I give you love one another?

Did he really say, by this everybody will know you’re my disciple by how you love each other? Did he really say I’m giving you these commandments and press them on your children? Yes yes yes yes yes and so much more. And the reason he said all of that is because he wants to answer the brokenness that is the result of the sinfulness of humanity, rooted in the story in the Garden of Eden.

In other words, he wants to restore it all. And you know what, y’all? I believe he’s going to. And I believe he can. And that’s why relationships matter. He wants you to live fully in your relationships. He wants you to live according to his wisdom and his will. And if we will do that, there can be hope for this old world.

Because here’s what I would say. Here’s what our world needs. In my opinion, our world needs for the people of God to act like the people of God. May it be so. Let’s pray together.

Father, we are grateful this day for the relationships that we that we have. The fact that you have created us in the context of relationships. And we know they’re hard, complicated, challenging, we know we live in them. And yet we also know that it’s your design. And so right now, Lord, I pray for the relationships across the life of our church. I pray, Lord, for forgiveness and healing and grace. There are those within the sound of my voice that just need your help, and I ask you to bring it to them. We pray for relationships across our nation, across our world. God, as we’ve already expressed our desire today for you to bring hope and healing. And we ask God that as we live fully into these relationships, that we’ll do it in a way that honor you and will bring great blessing to us. It’s our prayer. In Jesus name, Amen.