Genesis 3:20-24 | Sin & God’s Provision
Introduction
I remember one day, when I was about 9 or 10, my dad hauled me with him to the DMV to renew his driver’s license. Back in the 70s and 80s, most of Boise and Ada County’s offices were all together off Bannock Street before the Boise Towne Square Mall was even built (that’s why the Boise jail is literally across the street from the mall!). After my dad renewed his license, we took a moment, and we popped into one of the courtrooms to watch what was going on. We came in, my dad made me remove my baseball cap, and we found a place on the back bench. I remember him making me stand as the judge entered, and then we watched as people with traffic tickets, DUIs, and other mostly minor offenses all went before the judge that day.
They moved along quickly (Boise was small!) and were done after about an hour. As the judge was about to leave, she said she wanted my dad and me to stay. As a kid, I was seriously worried—what had we done wrong? Maybe I wasn’t quiet enough? Were we going to be arrested? Was there a kid jail? Looking back, it was meant to be a sweet thing and turned out to be a great experience where she came over, thanked me for being respectful and taking off my hat and standing at the right times, and then chatted with my dad and me for a bit about the law, court, and what we had seen.
I don’t know if that influenced me, but as long as I can remember, I have been a justice and righteousness-oriented person. I want to do the “right” thing, and I have a visceral reaction when I notice others aren’t doing the “right” thing or when I notice justice isn’t being served. Watching the judge sentence people to their punishments ticked that box even in “young” Ryan’s heart. It almost made me happy to see people receive the punishment I believed they deserved.
I’ve been in court several times since then, and a lot recently. As I’ve thought about it more as a grown-up, I think most of us desperately long for justice to be done, but I think we want a certain type of justice when we think about others and how we ourselves have been wronged. Certainly, we think, if someone has harmed ME or someone I love, I want them to get justice, I want it to be swift, and I want it to be as severe as possible.
Yet, what if it is I who has done something wrong? Well, perhaps we can be a little gentler on me? Maybe be a little slower to react towards me? Maybe give me a lot less than I deserve?
Review
The last sermon in Genesis was on Genesis 3:14–19, where we saw God’s judgment on the man, the woman, and the serpent. And yes, we saw very real discipline from God. The natural consequences and discipline that come from sin, from our choice to not do what God has asked us to do, are:
God’s Discipline (Content)
Pain
Conflict
Death
Again, those are not things God WANTS for us—in fact, he specifically has tried to keep us from going down those roads. But when we sin, when we live outside of God’s good ways, this is the consequence. Pain. Conflict. Death. And really, death is the ultimate punishment. Death in its fullest sense is permanent separation from God. It means we don’t ever get to walk in his grace and ways again.
But that is not where God leaves us. It is not where he left Adam and Eve. Even in his disciplines of the man and the woman, we saw:
Grace
Grace. God chose, in many different ways, to show grace to Adam and Eve, and God continues to show grace to us in many different ways when WE sin. We saw it most clearly in the last section, HOW God disciplined his people. We saw through God’s heart of discipline that:
God’s Heart in Discipline
Seeks: His People & Understanding
Shows: Gentleness & Grace
Speaks: Clearly
God seeks, shows, and speaks. He seeks his people and their understanding. He shows incredible gentleness and grace. And he speaks very clearly. God did that for Adam and Eve, and he still does it for you and me today. We have all sinned and strayed from God and his ways, yet God has been gracious to us in his pursuit of us, his care for us, and his love for us. Through his word (Scripture), through Jesus, through his very Holy Spirit, God is moving in and through us so that we might come to know his heart, even in discipline, and see his marvelous grace more. Lord willing, God’s common grace even motivates us to put our faith in Jesus for our entire life and salvation!
Yet God does more than just be gracious. Last time we saw God’s graciousness when we looked at “Sin and God’s Discipline”; this week, we see that even in sin, we can see the provision of God.
Sin & God’s Discipline
Sin & God’s Provision
Sin & God’s Provision—meaning God doesn’t leave us alone in our sin without real help. Even in his discipline, God provides for his people. I’m guessing many of you have read this section of Genesis, and I am guessing many of you have NOT seen this as God’s kindness and his provision. But it is!
In thinking about our legal system, while it definitely isn’t perfect, it does have many examples of provision. Free lawyers if you can’t afford them. The presumption of innocence. Many levels of punishment to help you modify your behavior before it becomes an extreme issue or extreme punishment, like life in jail. You may not think our legal system is primarily about grace and provision, but there is a lot of provision in it that we should be thankful for.
And our God is better than any legal system we have ever witnessed. When we come to our God, we want to see the provision he is providing even AMIDST the punishments. Today, what we see in this section of Genesis about God’s provision is how he provides:
Sin & God’s Provision
Children: A Path Forward
Sacrifice: A Covering
Exile: A Place
Provision: Children and A Path Forward
Let’s look at our passage again this morning:
The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:20–24 ESV
In the last section, we mentioned that even Eve’s punishment of pain during childbirth likely held a flickering light of hope for both Adam and Eve. When God said:
I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.
Genesis 3:16 ESV
Clearly, it meant that Adam and Eve would not die right away. They would have children. And then, again, in today’s section, we see God says:
The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
I find that statement kind of funny. Interestingly, Adam and Eve knew their command to multiply and spread from Genesis 1:28–31 and Genesis 2:15, but they did not seem to know exactly how that would happen. Otherwise, why would Adam have named her “Eve” only at this moment? It seems that, through their punishment and, especially after eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they finally realized how they would procreate and what that process would entail. And they now realize how it wouldn’t be as easy as it could have been because of their sin.
Children, in this sense, become a sign of God’s great provision. A sign of God’s holding off on the ultimate judgment and allowing people time to live. Time to reconcile with him. Time for the plan to unfold over generations. It is through having children that God’s people will continue to move their line forward, take their place in spreading and caring for this world, and also move history forward to the moment when THE child, THE promised seed of the woman, will come and destroy the serpent. Children represent God’s provision of a path forward with him.
If you have ever wondered why barrenness and singleness are seen as a problem in the Old Testament, this is why. Prior to Christ coming, if you were single or if you were childless, you assumed you were not taking part in the process of God’s provision and his plan to get to the ONE CHILD. Yes, there were practical concerns about who would provide for you in your old age and how you would be taken care of, but the bigger concern was the grand story of God and how you were taking your role in it. Yes, sometimes there were prophets or judges who were single, but they had a special role in proclaiming God’s message to God’s people or in leading God’s people. For a normal person, like you and me, they at least wanted to take part in the grand story and God’s provision by having children.
This really is a huge change that we see in the New Testament. Now that Jesus has come, singleness and barrenness no longer mean you aren’t part of the process in the same way. We aren’t waiting for this child anymore—he has already come! In fact, Paul commends some of the benefits of singleness and not having children now that our job is a little different. In 1 Corinthians chapter seven, Paul spends the whole chapter explaining how marriage is not bad and is still a good thing, but that singleness is not a problem. Now that our main goal is to proclaim the gospel to all those around us and encourage others to have faith and continue walking in it, there are even benefits to singleness. Paul says:
I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things and about how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
1 Corinthians 7:32–35 ESV
Behind all of this is something larger than just marriage and children. All this, children, singleness, and being married is ultimately about each of us having “undivided devotion to the Lord.” We all want to find that type of devotion—certain responsibilities in life can make that harder, even if they come with other benefits. Ultimately, God’s provision of children to Adam and Eve and many here, AND God’s provision of singleness, are about answering the same question:
How can we, even though we are sinners, take part in God’s plan and process to save his people?
Adam and Eve saw in their discipline that God was providing for them by giving them children. This would let them continue to participate in the process of ruling and subduing, as God originally commanded them. Especially if we are all to die, we need others to take over for us in this great task, as we each eventually stop our work. This was a path forward with God.
This imagery of God’s provision of children for Adam and Eve here in Genesis 3 points to a larger provision of God:
God provides ways to move forward even amidst our sin.
For Adam and Eve, God showed he was providing them a way forward with him by promising them time as they had children. That is still true for most of us today. But more importantly, when we sin and we deserve death, God is often working in the background to ensure that you and I still have a way to move forward. To continue to grow and mature, even if our sin is there and still hurting us and maybe others as well.
Application
Have you thought about how often that might be true for you? In many ways, God is providing for each of us to continue moving forward in our walk amid our sin. That God doesn’t instantly give up on us, but rather, he patiently provides ways forward?
How often have you been immature and hurt a relationship, but God still gives you other friendships and people to care for you so that you might still move forward? How many times have you made a mistake at one job only to still be able to get hired somewhere else and know the grace and provision to grow and still provide well for yourself or your family? How many friends do we all know who, in a hard moment of life, pull away from the church, pull away from friends, pull away from God, yet are still able to find Godly and loving churches and friends to walk with and mature more in Christ again, even in their same city?
This happens on large and small scales in our lives. Large family issues and work problems, and small graces in our everyday lives. Have you ever thought about how, for most of us, our forgetfulness and the few memories we hold on to let us forget the pain someone caused us, and move forward again? Not having a perfect memory is a grace! Similarly, a body that can heal and a brain that can be rewired are graces that help us move forward with our God and one another.
Where have you noticed that God has provided a path forward for you? God has and is caring for you and me in very much the same way as Adam and Eve. He is giving each of us provision through small and large graces to move forward, to continue our lives, and to have opportunities to know and love God more. Ways we can still know him and grow towards him, even when our sins and failures would make us think we shouldn’t be able to move forward anymore.
And perhaps, maybe just as important, where might you need to help provide a path forward for others? As we have already said, I think our tendency is to hold others more accountable than we would want to be held accountable. Is there a real way you need to be helping to provide a way forward with others in your life who may have hurt you, may have sinned against you, but still would love to move forward WITH you? How might you image this beautiful grace of God through your life to others?
Provision: Sacrifice and a Covering
This is all part of what Paul is saying in Romans 5:8:
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8 ESV)
While we were still sinners. Christ died for us WHILE we were sinners. His death and resurrection that we just celebrated at Easter was a provision for us in our sin. It was truly a sacrifice that we might receive all these graces that we have today, and that one day we might receive the ultimate grace—eternal life.
We have already mentioned many times, as we preach through Genesis, how we already see the hope of Jesus from the first chapters of the Bible. In Genesis, we see not only the mention of the future seed who would save us in Eve’s punishment, but we also immediately get an example of what kind of person he would be. We see, here in the first chapters of Genesis, that sacrifice will be needed to solve our problem. We see it in the sacrifice God makes for Adam and Eve:
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
You may have read that line and never noticed that it was talking about a sacrifice. But God clearly tells us that he made garments for Adam and Eve, and that they were made out of SKIN. We started this section with Adam and Eve, hiding in the garden, hoping God wouldn’t find them. They have crudely made coverings of leaves, likely a comical, drooping, sad covering of their nakedness. And here, God gives them an amazing provision: a sacrifice that truly covers them. Their grace of being covered will come at the cost of the life of something (or eventually someone) else.
The first death in all of Scripture comes at the very hands of God. God takes an animal and kills it. This is a sacrifice, and this answers so many questions for us. Have you ever wondered how Cain and Abel knew they were supposed to sacrifice? Have you ever wondered why Cain is chastised for bringing a sacrifice from the field and not from the flock? They knew what sacrifices were and how they were supposed to happen. Adam and Eve had seen God sacrifice. They had seen him kill an animal for them. They saw and were taught to mimic this act. They knew what sacrifice was, and they specifically knew that blood was needed. They saw that even if their death was postponed by God’s provision, death was still necessary, even for a momentary reprieve.
What a beautiful picture! Adam and Eve needed a sacrifice so that they might be covered. A sacrifice that pointed forward to a more real and more sufficient sacrifice—the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus. Here, at the very beginning, it appears that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden himself, sacrifices an animal as a pointer forward to what he would do and as the means to temporarily cover up Adam and Eve. He fashions for them real and sufficient clothing. He clothed them. He cared for them. He provided for them.
That is the beauty of this sacrifice here.
Sins & God’s Provision
Children: A Path Forward
Sacrifice: A Covering
Exile: A Place
This was a sacrifice that covered Adam and Eve—literally and spiritually. And it was done by God. Again, the Son of God stands there with Adam and Eve, knowing this is the sacrifice he will choose to make for them. And this imagery of sacrifice becomes a core theme for the rest of Scripture. Sacrifice with Cain and Abel. Sacrifice with Abraham. Sacrifice with Isaac. Sacrifice of the Passover. Sacrifice throughout Israel’s days with the tabernacle and temple. Sacrifice at the cross.
Friends, God has done this for us, and he is still doing so today! In Jesus, we have all been covered! Quoting several Psalms, Paul says this in Romans 4:
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
Romans 4:7–8 ESV
Many of you here, me included, have been Christians for quite a while. And you may have forgotten that life outside of Christ, at best, feels like leaves crudely sewn to cover us. Outside of Christ, we are all exposed, hoping no one notices the mistakes, the sins, the brokenness. We do our best to put on a controlled, composed exterior, but we are never really at peace because we are never really covered. If that is you this morning, Jesus has died for your sins as the ultimate sacrifice. He has died that you might be truly covered—so you don’t have to try to cover your own sins! That you might walk with God again. Come and put your faith in this Jesus today!
For the rest of you—don’t forget that you are already covered. And don’t forget how that happened for you, at the cross, and through Jesus’s resurrection.
Provision: Exile and a Place
Provisions
Children: A Path Forward
Sacrifice: A Covering
Exile: A Place
It is interesting that in the first two sentences, we get two distinct provisions from God. Children, representing a path forward, and a sacrifice, representing the covering God provides for his people. But the bulk of this section talks about something else. It talks about exile:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and to the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
We see here another example of the trinity even in Genesis. Mankind is like “one of us”. God—Father, Spirit, Son—are all talking together. Having a conversation. What a fascinating glimpse God allows us to see here. We can see the very persons of God discussing what to do next. Clearly, this is not recorded for God’s sake, but rather here in Genesis, God wants his people to begin to see that he is one God in three persons, and he wants us to see how he thinks about himself and us. God is concerned with us. He cares about what we have done.
And as we have already noted, he is giving us grace. Even in his discipline, he cares for us. Even when it probably doesn’t feel like love, it is.
His first concern is our current knowledge. Having eaten from the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve now both know good and evil, but sadly, it’s not a knowledge that is exactly like God. God knows good and evil because he embodies only good and knows that anything not from him is evil. Mankind, rather, largely chooses evil.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
If we are all honest, we know this is true. Our hearts are sick. We try to tell ourselves we are good (that is deceit), but we are not. Adam and Eve, you and I, are like God in knowing good and evil. But unlike God, we pick what is wrong, what is broken, what is evil. This still happens to us today, as Christians, as we are still battling the sin that dwells within us now:
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I desire to do what is right, but I lack the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:15–25 ESV, Selected
Jesus is the only answer to this problem. But there, in that moment, in the garden, this was a serious problem. Why? Because of the tree of life!
Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—
God sees the problem. If Adam and Eve remain in the garden, if they can continue to eat of the tree of life, they will be stuck in this state forever. They will never stop being sinners because they will never die. We may not feel this way, but death, at least our temporary death to this life and this body of sin, is a grace. We need something entirely new! We need God to stop this pattern FOR US. Because God wanted many people, because God wanted that to happen over time through nations and families, because God wanted us to see image after image over the years to help us understand the plan, he has waited and suffered with many sinners over a long time. God chose not to fix this problem for us immediately. That meant death to this life was a grace. It was grace for Adam and Eve, and it is a grace for you and me as well.
We talked about this at our men’s retreat on heaven, and as the women are learning this weekend at their retreat: Our death allows us to stop sinning and, instead, through our death we enter directly into God’s presence as we wait for him to resurrect our bodies and for his final CHANGING of us that we might no longer sin.
To accomplish that for Adam and Eve, God had to do something tragic. We see here that God “sent him out” of the garden. It is a much stronger word than just sent. Think drive out, expelled out, pushed out. God, in his love, took Adam and Eve, perhaps even literally kicking and screaming, out of the garden to the East of the garden. God loved his people enough to expel them from the garden, that they might die to live again. That they might not stay stuck in sin.
Can you imagine the tragedy of that moment? The heartbreak that moment had to be for God? Maybe some of your parents can understand, as you know, the difficulty of helping your kids get out into the world. Maybe it was a difficult drop-off at college, a hard conversation about encouragement as they headed out into the world, or perhaps it was literally kicking them out of the house. God knows that pain and more. God, perfect in love and desire to care for his children, took Adam and Eve out of the very place he had created and provided for them. He took them to try to live out their purpose of spreading and filling, guarding and protecting, outside the garden.
And God knew us. Just like the child that wants to come back again and again to eat their parent’s food, use their washer and dryer, and enjoy their Netflix and Hulu account, God knew that would be our tendency with him as well. Of course, if it were possible, we would try to go back to the garden! Back to the easy life, back to the place where our sin wouldn’t fully be dealt with. Who wouldn’t! So he guarded the way back. He stopped us. And that was grace.
We may look at Adam and Eve and think this is only a picture of how God acts towards them, but he treats us all this way quite often in his love and discipline of us. Have you ever seen God slam a door in your life so you couldn’t move down a road that likely would have brought harm to you? I know so many people who have told me that they were on the path to destruction, and God—again and again—put roadblocks in their way so they couldn’t get there. Roadblocks they tried to climb over again and again—but God stopped them. I know I have done that in my sin. How about you?
Do you realize that God knows you even better than you know yourself in this regard? The conclusion to that section, which we already read from Jeremiah 17, says this:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.
Jeremiah 17:9–10 ESV
God has searched our hearts and is caring for us. He knows what we need, according to our ways, as he says. And he provides for us.
Even though we see Adam and Eve kicked out, notice that they are still given a place. A place outside the garden, but a place nonetheless. Even in exile, God gives them, God gives us, a place where we can work. A place where we can do what he has made us to do. That is grace!
Conclusion
Friends, we may think we want justice immediately, without grace, and with as much strength as possible. We are like a victim in court who is seeking out some punishment in order that the hole and hurt we have might be filled and patched. But in reality, none of us wants that for ourselves. And that is because we all carry with us the many graces that God has given us. The graces we have in how he pursues his discipline of us, but also in the provisions he provides for us.
Sin & God’s Provision
Children: A Path Forward
Sacrifice: A Covering
Exile: A Place
Our God is always providing us a path forward, even as we sin. He provides covering for our sin again and again, but ultimately in Jesus. He gives us a place, this life, that we might have a chance to still grow and know him this side of glory as we wait for the eternal and sinless life he has promised us. This provision looks a certain way for Adam and Eve with children, sacrifice, and literal exile, but we are all given similar and sometimes even better provisions than this in the midst of OUR sin.
In fact, God has given us much of this provision today through his word!
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:12–13 ESV
It is through God’s word, through the Scriptures, that we are laid bare and naked like Adam and Eve in the garden. This is why we come to Scripture again and again. This is why we try to preach and study through times choked-full of God’s word. God’s words reveal that we are sinners who have chosen evil. And it begs us to find covering. And there is only one sufficient covering—the blood of Jesus.
You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin.
Psalm 85:2 ESV
That is what Jesus did for us on the cross, and it is what he promises to continue to do for us today. Like many other things we know about Jesus, we quickly forget that he didn’t just die on the cross to provide us covering as a one-time question—Jesus is still providing for us today. Listen to what God says through the Psalmist:
O you who love the LORD, hate evil!
He preserves the lives of his saints;
He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Light is sown for the righteous,
and joy for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name!
Psalm 97:10–12 ESV
God preserves the lives of his saints. God works righteousness into us. Even today, God is providing for you and me with hearts that beat, minds that work, and many other ways that he allows us to move forward, to be covered, and to live in this place that he has given us to his glory. God will not allow you to fail! GOD will provide!
The goal of all these provisions is that you and I would find ourselves, every single day, praising God!
I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.
For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”
Psalm 89:1–2 ESV
From Adam and Eve until today, God has shown his steadfast, unwavering, unfailing love to us. As the Psalmist says, God will establish his faithfulness, and he has.
Response
Our God not only meets Adam and Eve and us graciously amidst our sin, but he even provides for us in our sin. This morning, stop and think for a moment about the provision of God for you, even in your sins.
Sin & God’s Provision
A Path Forward
A Covering
A Place
How has God provided you with a path forward, a covering for your sins, and a place to live today to his glory? How might God be asking you to also help provide a path forward for someone who has wronged you? How might we point others to the only true covering we all need, Jesus? And how might we thank God for this place, this life, as grace for sinners who weren’t immediately killed in our sin?
I want to give you a moment to respond to those. As the worship team comes and plays, ponder those for a moment. Ponder our God who provides even amidst sin. The Son of God himself, who, knowing what he would do for us one day on the cross, provides in large and small ways every day that we might walk with him, be covered, and live in the place he has for us now.
Benediction of Provision
“The LORD bless you and keep you;
The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24–26 ESV
