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[00:00] We are still in Genesis 3, but alas, this is the last week we will be in the garden.
[00:08] Last week, my dad talked about Abner's response to their sin, which was also our response,
[00:14] which is shame and blame.
[00:17] This week, we look at the Lord's response to mankind's sin, and he essentially gives
[00:21] three speeches to the serpent, to the woman, and to the man.
[00:26] Now, typically, I like to be a good old classic Baptist preacher and give three points, but
[00:33] that's not going to be the case this time.
[00:41] There's more to what I thought, so we're just kind of going to just plug along verse by
[00:44] verse, and at the end, there will be a little like, you know, some, you know, items to consider.
[00:52] But first, let's just read the passage, Genesis 3, 14 through 24.
[00:59] I have the bookmark, but you know, that was way too big.
[01:06] All right, 14 through 24, "The Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this,
[01:12] cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field.
[01:16] On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.'
[01:20] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;
[01:25] and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
[01:29] To the woman, he said, 'I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.
[01:33] In pain you shall bring forth children.
[01:35] Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.'
[01:39] And to Adam, he said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten
[01:42] of the tree, of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground
[01:47] because of you.
[01:48] In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring
[01:52] forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
[01:55] By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of
[01:59] it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.'
[02:03] The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living, and the
[02:07] Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothing.
[02:12] Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man had become like one of us, knowing good and evil.
[02:16] Now lest he reach out his hand, and take also the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.'
[02:21] Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, to work the ground from which
[02:25] he was taken.
[02:26] He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and
[02:31] flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life."
[02:35] All right, so a lot there, but right away we observe that the serpent is different from
[02:46] humankind, or the treatment of the serpent is different than humankind.
[02:50] Last week we saw the Lord interrogates Adam and Eve, and he converses with them.
[02:56] That is not so with the serpent, which was honestly one of the great mistakes of Eve.
[03:02] When evil comes to tempt you, do not even converse with it.
[03:07] To engage with the devil means he has already won.
[03:09] We will see in the next few weeks when God is talking to Cain, and we're going to talk
[03:14] about this passage a little bit later on as well.
[03:16] He says, "Sin is crouching at the door, so to engage with the devil is to be devoured
[03:21] by it."
[03:22] One of my favorite quotes of all time is from John Owen in his book, "The Mortification
[03:27] of Sin," and he says, "Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you."
[03:32] That essentially was one of the biggest mistakes of Eve, she didn't do that.
[03:35] She was conversing with evil.
[03:37] So the Lord is now looking to converse with the devil.
[03:40] He just gets straight to the point, because there is no hope of pardon for Satan.
[03:45] So the Lord says this to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all
[03:48] livestock and above all beasts of the field.
[03:51] On your belly you shall go, and on the dust you shall eat all the days of your life."
[03:57] There are three points to this curse to the serpent, and the three points to this curse
[04:02] are crawling on his belly, eating dust, and getting his head smashed in.
[04:08] Notice how the serpent, so here, notice here right in the beginning with the serpent and
[04:13] later on in verse 17 with the ground, are the only two things that are cursed, specifically.
[04:18] And I don't know why, but I always viewed humankind was cursed.
[04:23] But Adam and Eve were never cursed directly.
[04:25] So for example, they feel the effects of curse, and the sin has curse on its own, but God
[04:30] never tells Eve, "You're cursed, Eve," or Adam, you know, "Cursed are you."
[04:36] No.
[04:37] But blessing still remains, and is still just a small, passable example of the Lord's goodness.
[04:42] So he specifically only brings down a curse on Satan and the ground.
[04:48] And we'll see later on.
[04:49] So most of this sermon has come from these two books, this Genesis commentary, and this
[04:55] big old chungus, boy, by John Calvin.
[05:01] But John Calvin says, and we're going to talk about why he says this, is that the Lord acts
[05:05] rather as a physician than a judge.
[05:08] And I say that because that caught my eye is how he curses the serpent, curses the ground,
[05:14] but doesn't actually specifically say, "Woman, you are cursed, man, you are cursed."
[05:18] There's consequences for their sin, but they're not cursed.
[05:22] Which is why he starts with the serpent in his three speeches.
[05:25] Here he imposes a punishment of condemnation, whereas with Adam and Eve, it is still punishment,
[05:30] but it is a corrective punishment, which is a design to lead us back to repentance.
[05:36] There was never going to be repentance from the serpent, but hopefully there's repentance
[05:39] for Adam and Eve and from us.
[05:42] Now, as far as the serpent's curse, it is a curse above all livestock, which, honestly,
[05:49] is that even a surprise.
[05:51] There's a reason why most people view snakes as Indiana Jones does in the Raiders of the
[05:55] Lost Ark and all of the other ones.
[05:58] It's absolute horror, disgust, and behemoths toward snakes.
[06:01] And there's actually anyone here that actually just likes a snake, a good snake, just pick
[06:08] it up.
[06:09] Okay, I was just making sure, like, psycho.
[06:10] Yeah, that's true.
[06:11] That's true.
[06:12] He probably won.
[06:13] And no, it is funny.
[06:14] Everyone was like, "Oh my, you know, there's me, the big, tough guy."
[06:18] And he was telling us about this huge spider that was back patio.
[06:22] We were like, "Did you kill him?"
[06:23] He's like, "No, I let it go."
[06:24] I'm like, "What?
[06:25] Are you kidding me?"
[06:26] Now, the curse of the serpent being sent on his belly has literally been a debate for
[06:34] a millennia.
[06:37] So this commentary from John Calvin is, like, from the 1500s, and he's quoting people way
[06:43] before him.
[06:44] And this other commentary is newer, and they all have different views.
[06:48] Some say the serpent had legs or a tail that it walked on and was now made to slither.
[06:53] Some of them say always slither on belly, but it was now just going to be forever.
[06:58] Some say Satan made the serpent, so the serpent was always on his belly, but the Satan made
[07:03] it be upright, and the curse resorts it back to its normal state.
[07:07] Those are the three main ones.
[07:13] Scriptures don't specify exactly what it looks like, but what we do know is that even when
[07:17] the curse is lifted, we see specifically in Isaiah 65.25, it makes it clear that the serpent
[07:23] will still be eating dust.
[07:24] At the end of days, the serpent is still going to be eating dust.
[07:28] So for me, personally, it has no bearing on my life, whether it had legs, a tail, no legs,
[07:35] tail.
[07:36] It doesn't matter.
[07:37] What we do know is that the serpent will always be eating dust, even to the end of the days,
[07:41] and that curse is now lifted.
[07:43] Now, John quote Calvin, he has an interesting take on this, as in, he doesn't say, he gives
[07:52] an example of who says what and what not, but he shows the symbolism also of the snake,
[07:57] which I thought was fascinating.
[07:59] He says, "The serpent had this erect posture of the sense that he could rise against man
[08:04] and penetrate heaven, and the Lord is saying, 'Hey, back to the ground.
[08:09] Back to your proper rank, you filthy animal,' essentially," which I thought was just really
[08:14] cool to see.
[08:16] I don't know if he's just pulling that out, but it does make sense that the serpent thought
[08:19] he could rise to man's posture into heaven, and the Lord is saying, "No, back to the ground
[08:24] with you," and because he is sent onto his belly for the rest of his days, this means
[08:30] he will be eating dust for the rest of his days, and yes, that doesn't sound like a nice
[08:35] yummy cheesecake or anything.
[08:37] To eat dust is an expression of total defeat.
[08:40] To eat dust is an expression of total defeat, and that total defeat is described in the last
[08:45] part of this curse.
[08:47] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.
[08:52] He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
[08:56] So, while most of chapter 3 is essentially an sad ending to man's time in the garden
[09:04] and the perfect harmony they had with Christ, there are still great moments of hope and
[09:08] grace throughout this ending, which is what we're going to end on later, but there's
[09:14] probably none more profound than chapter 15 here, and as oftentimes what I think we mentioned
[09:19] a few weeks ago is considered the first gospel message or the first evangel, and while, yes,
[09:27] there's nothing I would like more than to just take my heel and give it the old stomp
[09:32] and squish, the Lord's not talking here about a physical battle between man and snake or
[09:42] serpent.
[09:43] It's not a spiritual battle with Jesus being the seed that finally crushes the head of
[09:47] Satan.
[09:49] We further know this is a spiritual battle because in John chapter 8, Jesus is talking
[09:54] to the Jews and Pharisees, and he basically, to sum it up, talks about like, "Hey, if you
[10:00] don't listen to the word of the Lord, you're a child of the devil."
[10:05] Basically saying there's a battle going on, it's not listen to the Lord, it's to be one
[10:09] of the devil.
[10:10] And we also know the spiritual battle because in Romans 8, Paul talks about the God of peace
[10:14] will soon crush Satan under his heel, which is good news because the serpent will not
[10:22] have the last word, and Eve in essence will outlast her adversary.
[10:30] So the serpent is cursed, which then leads us to the Lord addressing the woman.
[10:35] To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, and pain you shall
[10:39] bring forth children.
[10:41] Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you."
[10:47] Not to all the mothers in the room.
[10:49] This part of the fall is quite evident.
[10:51] I've never heard a woman say, "Wow, that was really relaxing and awesome."
[10:56] I get the woman fuzzies by those attractions.
[11:00] Never heard that.
[11:01] Now, I've tried telling Eve of this, that I know it's painful for you, but do you know
[11:08] the pain I feel, having to watch you suffer?
[11:13] I mean, I know yours is bad, but I mean, put yourself in my shoes.
[11:16] Nah, that's good.
[11:17] I don't actually say that.
[11:19] But I had basically passed out in both births, not because of the gourd, because I was like,
[11:26] "Oh, she's freaking out."
[11:29] She's in a lot of pain.
[11:31] So yes, obviously, this is very evident.
[11:35] We know childbirth is painful.
[11:38] We do things to try to mitigate the pain and things like that, which is not a bad thing.
[11:42] But even with the...
[11:43] What's it called?
[11:44] The shot in your back again?
[11:45] Epidural.
[11:46] Even with epidural, it's still painful.
[11:48] Epidural itself, it's kind of painful.
[11:51] Looks like it's a needle like this big of mine.
[11:57] So while it...
[11:58] Yes, child giving birth is very painful, pushing out a baby, baby, painful.
[12:04] The whole thing is very painful.
[12:08] But I think here there's also more to it, and it's that the experience of raising a child
[12:13] is also painful.
[12:14] You see here, he says, "I will multiply your pain and childbearing in pain you will bring
[12:19] forth to children."
[12:21] So Ridley is only two, almost three years old, and I'm already seeing small little pains
[12:28] of raising a child.
[12:29] I will tell her not to do something.
[12:32] And she looks at me and literally with a smile on her face, will do exactly what I just told
[12:36] her not to do.
[12:38] And luckily she's cute, so she gets away with it a lot of times.
[12:42] But it's still, she's constantly pushing these limits.
[12:45] And sometimes it can frustrate your patients.
[12:49] Oh, Camden, never.
[12:54] So there's pain in bringing forth children, just the correction and the discipline.
[13:00] But also I think there's a lot of pain, and I'm not here yet, in raising children to follow
[13:04] Jesus.
[13:05] And my guess would be, there's nothing more painful to a parent than a child who does
[13:09] not care to walk in ways of the Lord.
[13:13] I know, at least when I was growing up, I had a rebellious streak from my middle school,
[13:20] early high school days, where I literally wanted nothing to deal with the Lord and everything
[13:24] to deal with sin and what the world had to offer.
[13:26] And I can imagine, I also know that brought a lot of grief and pain to my parents.
[13:31] And I see a lot of other parents who have children that either walk away from the faith
[13:35] or want nothing to deal with the faith, and how heartbreaking and crushing it is.
[13:38] And it's part of the reason, if you are a parent, a lot of it is, yes, is parenting,
[13:44] but a lot is from the grace of God.
[13:46] So when you're with your child in the small moment, in the small quiet, be praying that
[13:50] they love the Lord above all else.
[13:54] Because yes, having children is one of God's greatest gifts and greatest blessings, but
[13:58] the entire process is going to be fraught with pain and suffering, and that's part of
[14:02] the curse.
[14:03] Raising children is going to bring pain and suffering, and that's part of the curse.
[14:10] And then we come to the second half of verse 16.
[14:12] "Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you."
[14:17] So what's interesting about this verse specifically, especially if you have the ESV, the word contrary
[14:24] here is relatively new to the ESV, the newer translations of the ESV.
[14:27] For example, this Bible is pretty old, and it doesn't say contrary.
[14:31] It says, "Your desire shall be for your husband," which sounds like a good thing.
[14:38] Every desires me.
[14:39] What's up?
[14:40] That sounds good.
[14:43] But the part of the difficulty in this verse, in these words, desire and rule, which is
[14:48] that they don't have to be bad words, desire and rule, as I just said.
[14:52] It's a good thing for a wife to or a spouse to desire their husband or their wife, a romantic
[14:58] desire.
[14:59] Rule or ruling is not always a bad thing.
[15:01] We've already seen in chapter 2 the sense in which man was given a certain kind of authority
[15:07] in his marital relationship.
[15:09] He's the one that gives his name to his wife.
[15:10] She needs to be a helper to him.
[15:12] So desire and rule are not necessarily bad, but what seems to be the view in verse 16
[15:19] is that it is a malicious and devouring kind of desire on the wife's part and a harsh rule
[15:25] on the husband's part.
[15:28] But we're able to get a better understanding of this verse by looking at Genesis 4.7, which
[15:32] I mentioned earlier with Cain.
[15:34] It's when God addresses Cain after he sins.
[15:37] He says, "If you do well, will you not be accepted?
[15:40] And if you do not do well, sin is crouching out the door."
[15:43] This is the part that's really similar to what the Lord says to Eve.
[15:47] His desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.
[15:52] So you can tell even in English, the verses are extremely similar and in Hebrew, they're
[15:56] basically using the same exact words.
[15:58] So with Cain, the Lord is saying that sin is desiring to have mastery over you and in
[16:04] the same way that the woman is experiencing the curse of the fall, desires to have mastery
[16:09] over her husband.
[16:10] That is a result of the fall, but the husband will rule over her.
[16:14] And for the husband who was affected by the fall, this rule, which was supposed to be love,
[16:19] loving and gentle and gracious and a sacrificial leadership is now harsh, domineering, putting
[16:25] the two at odds with one another.
[16:29] So before the fall, Adam and Eve lived in this absolute marital harmony and bliss, and the
[16:34] two became one.
[16:35] They loved each other, respected one another, and built each other up.
[16:38] But now, because of the curse, men and women use their desires and power to build themselves
[16:43] up and to tear each other down.
[16:46] Instead of supporting, we subvert.
[16:49] Kevin Deung says this really good piece about, he has this piece talking about, you know,
[16:55] men and women.
[16:56] And he says this, "Notice that the women experienced the fallness of the world in her primary sphere
[17:01] of responsibility.
[17:03] What we see in chapter two in the garden, in the perfect scenario in Eden, were the
[17:06] two spheres of her responsibility.
[17:08] Not to the exclusion of everything else, but to primary.
[17:11] She was to be a helper to the husband, and together with her husband, they were supposed
[17:15] to be fruitful and multiply.
[17:16] She was to be a helper to her husband and then a mother bearing forth children."
[17:20] And so it is no conscious, I definitely spelled that wrong, that these two primary spheres
[17:27] of her responsibility are those that are singled out most by the fall.
[17:30] So her two primary, so what he's basically saying is, her calling or our calling is jacked
[17:36] up because, you know, relationships are jacked up because of the fall.
[17:39] Her primary sphere of influence was being a helper to her husband and child bearing.
[17:44] And now both of those, one, she's going to be at odds with her husband and two, child
[17:48] bearing or, you know, giving birth is going to suck because it's going to be really painful.
[17:53] And we also see these two spheres of the woman are, they're clearly a result of the fall
[17:59] because Paul addresses them in Ephesians 5.
[18:02] We're not going to do a deep dive in Ephesians 5, but because of the fall, a woman's temptation
[18:08] is to usurp the husband's God-given leadership.
[18:11] So that's why Paul says, "Respect your husband."
[18:14] His word specifically to the wife is, "Respect your husband."
[18:17] And the man's temptation in the fall is to be domineering or, you know, hard leadership
[18:22] towards his wife.
[18:23] That's why Paul says, "Love your wife."
[18:25] You see the two in Ephesians and Paul is speaking to the natural bench of our sinful nature in
[18:31] Genesis 3.
[18:32] Both of these commands speak to our natural tendencies that happen because of the fall.
[18:39] So now this brings us to the third speech, the speech to the man, which is the longest
[18:43] of the three.
[18:44] "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which
[18:48] I commanded you, you shall not eat it, cursed to this ground because of you.
[18:51] In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring
[18:55] forth for you and shall eat the plants of the field.
[18:58] By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it
[19:01] you are taking where you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
[19:04] So we can see right out the gate, "Men, if you listen to your wife, you are severely
[19:09] punished."
[19:10] No, I'm just kidding.
[19:11] That's not happening.
[19:12] I shouldn't even joke about that.
[19:13] Someone's going to say that.
[19:14] Someone's going to be like, "Yeah, okay."
[19:17] That's not true.
[19:18] Especially for myself.
[19:19] Usually I'm way better off when I listen to Everett and wiser when I listen to Everett.
[19:25] But what my dad talked about two or three weeks ago, however long it was, is that it
[19:29] is because of his passivity that he's being punished.
[19:32] He pushed off God's given responsibility to be leader and protector.
[19:36] He obeyed the voice of his wife instead of obeying the voice of God.
[19:42] And because he ate the fruit, eating will now come at a cost.
[19:45] It will no longer be a simple task, but it will be hard work and labor that he's able
[19:49] to do so.
[19:51] Calvin puts it this way.
[19:52] He says, "Therefore, the Lord had placed him over a garden which was to be cultivated,
[19:58] but whereas in that labor, there had been a very sweet delight, but now its service
[20:07] work is enjoined upon him as if he was condemned to the minds of Moria."
[20:13] Actually, he didn't say Moria.
[20:14] I just want to see who's the Lord of the Rings fans in here.
[20:20] So as John Calvin puts it, "The work was sweet, it was delightful, and now it's like you're
[20:24] working in a deep mind," which I thought was a great contrast of the result of the fall.
[20:28] Now, we live in an age of drive-through and credit cards, and getting food is a little
[20:38] too easy.
[20:39] I like to think of it as a reverse curse now.
[20:41] It's too easy, so now we're a bunch of glottons and we don't know how to do anything for ourselves.
[20:47] But this is saying the work we talked about in Chapter 2 is a God-given gift, something
[20:51] that is good and now is going to be a chore and a struggle.
[20:55] So whether it's with your hands or your mind or your words or whatever you do, while there
[21:00] is joy in it, like obviously a lot of people really love what they do and are really good
[21:04] at it, it is no longer pain-free and it comes at a cost.
[21:08] So to sum up this curse that the Lord is speaking to the ground and to Adam is that creation,
[21:17] where man was supposed to have dominion over it, is now going to be fighting back.
[21:21] It was supposed to be easily cultivated, but now creation said, I'm going to show you these
[21:27] hands real quick, it's fighting back.
[21:31] And then the Lord honestly just drops an absolute heater against Adam here.
[21:37] I shouldn't be laughing, but he says this, he says, "Till you return to the ground, for
[21:41] Adam were taken, for you are dust, and dust you shall return."
[21:46] Absolutely embarrassing, but here we learn that man's time is eventually going to come
[21:55] to an end.
[21:56] And we're going to see here in a little bit that actually while that is tragic and sad
[22:01] in light of what was, that in itself is a good thing.
[22:05] But we'll talk about that in a little bit.
[22:08] And then we get to this last little piece of narrative, which we will see shows the
[22:12] goodness and mercy of God in the midst of pain.
[22:15] The man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living, and the
[22:19] Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clove them.
[22:23] Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.
[22:29] Now lest he reach out his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever.
[22:33] Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which
[22:37] he was taken.
[22:38] He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and
[22:42] flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life.
[22:46] Now this is actually the most devastating part of their sin and punishment.
[22:51] It's like, no childbearing sucks, man and wife are going to be at odds with one another,
[22:56] it's going to be hard to work the ground and to do work.
[23:00] But here we see their punishment is banishment.
[23:03] They're cast out, they're exiled, they went from communing with God and living how they
[23:08] were supposed to be created and how they were meant to live to now being cast out, turned
[23:12] away from what was supposed to be the Garden of Eden, a gift to them.
[23:17] But in the midst of the suffering and pain, we see glimpses of hope and grace.
[23:22] We are going to see here that he is the God of every grace.
[23:25] First we see that life goes on.
[23:28] God could easily and honestly just end it here and start it over.
[23:35] Does that annoy you guys?
[23:36] This was obviously a mistake.
[23:39] Done, done zone, but that's not true.
[23:44] And we like to beat up Adam a lot because, well, he deserves a hard time and rightfully
[23:50] so.
[23:51] But I have to give Adam a lot of credit here because as these blows are just raining down
[23:57] on essentially him and his wife, he picks up on a promise.
[24:02] His wife will have an offspring and this offspring will defeat the enemy.
[24:07] So yes, these blows are just coming upon him like, oh my goodness, like the weight of what
[24:11] I have done is now starting to be felt.
[24:14] But he hears this little glimmer of hope and he says, ah, there is hope here.
[24:19] There is hope here.
[24:20] And he calls his wife Eve because she is mother of life.
[24:23] He has hope that she will have a child just as the Lord had said.
[24:28] And this child or this offspring and the seed will eventually defeat the enemy.
[24:34] The second glimpse of hope and the second reason why we see that he is a God of every
[24:39] grace is that we see the Lord making garments for Adam and Eve.
[24:43] Adam and Eve foolishly thought, like we do, that we can just cover up our sins by any
[24:48] means necessary.
[24:49] I don't know what that looks like, but God says, no, you are not just going to take fig
[24:57] leaves and cover yourselves up.
[24:59] That's not going to do.
[25:00] That's not sufficient.
[25:01] He makes an animal and he teaches them that is only pain, the shedding of blood and sacrifice
[25:07] that your sin could be covered.
[25:09] Satan is crushed not by animal sacrifice, but of the sacrifice of the begotten son.
[25:17] This is one of the first, you know, or this is the first time of an animal being slaughtered
[25:23] to cover, you know, man, this isn't a man.
[25:31] And there's this idea here that it's also they went from fig leaves to animal skins.
[25:38] It's like this change of status, you know, you know, your wedding garments or, you know,
[25:43] these special clothes, like it's a change of status before God.
[25:47] Yes, they're still sinful.
[25:48] Yes, they are still punished, but they're still, you know, thought after in the mind
[25:55] of God.
[25:56] They're still cared for by going from fig leaves to animal skin.
[26:01] Lastly, we see that God is a God of every grace by banning humanity in the tree of life.
[26:08] So in a weird sense, this banishment of Adam and Eve is also an act of grace.
[26:14] It sounds harsh, but really it's an act of grace because if they were to eat of this
[26:18] tree of life now that they've essentially enslaved themselves to the serpent, that would
[26:23] mean they would forever be in the state of wickedness, evil and sorrow, completely separated
[26:28] from God.
[26:29] In other words, if they were to eat of this tree of life now that they have sinned, they
[26:33] would instantly be living in the state of hell, which is why in a weird sense, this
[26:38] banishment in light of what while it's sad, in light of what once was, is actually a picture
[26:44] of God's protection.
[26:48] That's why Calvin says this, that the Lord is not only a judge, but a physician, he says,
[26:53] for God does not consider and chastising his children what they deserve, but will be useful
[26:59] to them in the future, and fulfill the office of physician rather than a judge.
[27:05] The punishments inflicted by God are the remedies and restraints of our vitiated nature.
[27:11] So what he's saying is we deserve a lot more.
[27:14] We think it's really harsh, but really we deserve a lot worse, and here he is trying
[27:19] to bring us back to himself.
[27:21] So today, we are still in exile because of our sin.
[27:26] We feel the pings of the curse, we feel the pings of death.
[27:30] But just as God, his great mercy, gives hope to Abeneath, how much more do we have to hope
[27:35] for?
[27:36] The clash of the kingdoms happens in chapter 3, and we find its climax in the triumph of
[27:42] Christ Jesus.
[27:43] Just as a tree that carried the fruit which brought sin into the world, so did a different
[27:48] tree carry the one who bore our sin.
[27:53] In this Jesus Christ who breaks the curse and restores us to himself, that we may sing
[27:57] with David, "Oh death, where is your sting?
[27:59] Oh death, where is your victory?"
[28:01] And he is coming again, and on that day he will make all things new, all former things
[28:06] will pass away, and the curse will be no more.
[28:09] We know the ending.
[28:11] We know the one who is victorious, so let us live a life of the one who took our sin,
[28:16] who took our shame, that started here in the garden.
[28:19] And remember that he is the God of every grace, even in our affliction.
[28:24] Let's pray.
[28:26] Dear my Father, while this whole episode of Ab and Eve feels honestly like a downer because
[28:45] of what was and what could have been, we are reminded of your goodness.
[28:53] You are reminded that even though we forsook faithful love, you still decided to cover
[28:58] us, to make a way for us.
[29:06] It is evident that in these passages that you care for us, and that you desire to be
[29:11] with us.
[29:13] Thank you for showing us mercy.
[29:15] You are the God of every mercy, and as the Psalm says, your mercies are new every morning.
[29:21] I pray that we will remember that your mercies are new.
[29:24] I pray that we will remember that we are not too far gone, and that in our affliction and
[29:32] our pain and our suffering, you are with us, and that you desire for us to be near to you.
[29:39] Lord, you are faithful and true, and I pray that we remember that.
[29:44] We love you.