Here’s tomorrow’s PM sermon, Paradise Lost: 3:1-6:8, in abbreviated form. By the way, the title was picked before Matt’s blog on John Milton.
In 1971 a community activist in Chicago named Saul Alinsky published an influential book entitled Rules for Radicals. The purpose of the book was to detail how individuals could bond together in a democracy to subvert the establishment, how communities can gather in common interest for a revolution, how mass power is organized. Alinksy’s ideology taught that any means necessary could be used for the desired end of subversion. He begins his book with a dedication to the first radical known to humanity: “From all our legends, mythology, and history . . . the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.”
It’s doubtful that the Marxist leaning Alinsky would have believed in a literal Lucifer, but he nails on the head the description of Lucifer’s subversion of God’s kingdom, of how he organized the first couple and their succeeding generations into a community that rebels against God’s created order. What we’ll find this evening is that Satan’s kingdom brought unavoidable and unimaginable change – sinful change – but also that God will transform this rebellion into the greatest hope for humanity. . . .
The Ruin of Paradise
We begin with the ruin of paradise in Genesis 3:1-13. The introduction of the serpent, Satan, who calls into question God’s authority, is a hint that Adam was not guarding the Garden as commanded in Genesis 2:15. Satan interrogates the woman and calls into question God’s word by focusing on the prohibition instead of the provision: God didn’t say you couldn’t eat from every tree. She replies to Satan with the command given in Genesis 2 but still focuses on the prohibition, “you shall not eat” and adds to it, “you shall not touch,” thus deemphasizing God’s goodness by allowing them to eat from every other tree. Then Satan misrepresents God’s command altogether by telling the woman, “you won’t die.” “God doesn’t really want to protect you, he just doesn’t want you to be like him.” She takes the bait and starts thinking pragmatically, by noticing the apparent goodness, beauty, and wisdom of something off limits. She then gives it to Adam who, in silence during the conversation, eats the forbidden fruit with her. Then, in verse 7, Satan’s disingenuous words actually come true. The couple realizes the that they’ve sinned against God and then hide from their Maker. In stunning irony, the couple that believed they’d be like God by eating the fruit now are afraid to commune with him. God calls to Adam in verses 9 and 11 to illicit a confession from him. Adam abdicates his authority and blames the woman God gave him as if it were all God’s fault. The woman, in turn, blames the snake. Culpability is skirted by the man and woman resulting in God’s intervention in the “blame-game” by allotting punishment to the serpent, woman, and man.
Verses 14-19 are God’s saddening poetic punishment against his creation and image bearers. First, Satan is cursed and promised that though his followers will wage war against God’s kingdom one of the woman’s descendents will have the upper hand. God’s words in verse 15 have been recognized as the first promise of salvation, the gospel, in Scripture. Though humanity is now cursed because of sin, one from their descendents will rise up and crush the skull of Satan. The woman’s punishment impacts her role as wife and mother, where there will be pain in childbearing and a sinful desire to rule over her husband, to subvert the order of marriage where Adam leads and his she follows. In turn, Adam will not lead gently, but rule over her as a despot. And, of course, we realize that verse 16 is true in our marriages today. What God brought together in marriage, husband and wife will seek to tear apart. Adam’s curse reflects his role as ground keeper, where now the ground fights against him. Ultimately, the ground which he was taken from will receive him again in death. As one commentator noted on these verses, “The passage has brought us full circle from creation’s bliss to sin’s burden.”[1] Yet Adam recognizes the hope promised in verse 15 and announces in verse 20 that the woman’s name will now be Eve, which means, “mother of all the living.” God has graciously allowed a way for the commands for humanity to “multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” to continue by allowing the fallen couple to have children. Verses 22-24 describe how God makes coverings for the couple, decides that they must not remain in the Garden to eat from the tree of life, and banishes them in exile from Eden. Paradise is lost but the commands aren’t. Adam now labors in a world scared by sin, unfulfilling labor, death, and a life-and-death struggle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. What pity that Adam was made to guard the Garden but now he’s guarded from it. Hope for humanity must now be fostered in a hostile world.
Chapter 4 recounts the further deterioration and subversion of God’s kingdom. Here we see the seed of the serpent reign supreme. The fallen couple experiences the blessings of Genesis 1:26-28 and conceive children. Yet the oldest will actually be part of the seed of the serpent through his murdering of another image bearer, his brother. In verses 3-4 Cain and Abel are recorded as offering sacrifices to God. Note that Abel brings the firstborn and best for his offering, while Cain doesn’t. This leads to God rejecting Cain’s offering and questioning him as he did Adam about his sin. Cain, in turn, let’s his sinful desires conquer him and he kills his brother. God pronounces a curse on Cain in verse 11 who must now be a vagrant wanderer in the land, never to find rest. In his graciousness, God places a mark on Cain because of his self-pity so that his life would be spared. Yet Cain is unable to respond to this graciousness; instead, he builds a city and names it after his legacy, his son, Enoch. From there the first civilization outside of Eden is built. Agriculture, music, and weaponry develop in the city that is built for wandering humans who revolt against God’s world. While the blood of the godly brother cries out from the ground for redemption, the blood of the other continues. Verses 17-22 contain Cain’s genealogy which ends with Lamach, who further disobeys God’s commands by taking two wives for himself. The beauty of Adam’s poem to his one wife in Genesis 2:23, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” is inverted by Lamech’s poem to his wives in 4:23-24 as he glorifies and intensifies the murder and vengeance of his forefather, Cain. “I’ve killed a man for striking me. If Cain is avenged, then I’m a greater avenger.” Yet Cain’s descendent, Lamach, doesn’t get the last word in the narrative because God grants Eve another seed to carry on the promise of Genesis 3:15 when Seth is born. The word play between Cain’s son and Seth’s is significant: while Cain names a city after his son, Enoch, Seth’s son, Enosh, brings about the time when the humanity begins to call upon the name of the Lord: “To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” The seed of the serpent furthers their own interest while the seed of the woman seeks the Lord’s.
Chapter 5 reiterates Adam’s and Seth’s genealogy in contrast to Cain’s, but also shows the devastating results of sin. Death comes to God’s image bearers, even the godly ones. And so in verse 5 Adam dies, and in verse 8 Seth dies, and his son, Enosh, dies in verse 11, and so on and so on until in the seventh generation, verse 24 records that Enoch walked with God and escaped death. Death is not the final word. Man was meant to life forever in fellowship with God and Enoch’s experience was meant to bring hope to Eve’s seed. By walking with God the curse of sin could be broken. But yet death reigned as Enoch’s sons died. And then, a different Lamach is born and recognizes the agony of living under the curse and the need for rest, and so names his son, Noah, whose name sounds like the word “rest”. Verse 29 reads, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the LORD has cursed.” This father’s hope is that through his son the head of the serpent would be crushed and the curse of sin reversed.
Chapter 6:1-8 contrasts Lamach’s hope for Noah with the sinful world in which Noah was born. Humanity continued to multiply, fulfilling God’s command, but only spread the world with the serpent’s seed. Look at verse 5: the wickedness of man reigned, every intention of man’s heart was evil, and it was continually evil all the time. What characterized this wickedness was the sinful intercourse between the sons of God, who were most likely Seth’s godly linage. There’s no hint that these individuals were angels (which is a common interpretation by some today, though this wasn’t the interpretation of Augustine, the Protestant Reformers, and most modern conservative commentators). Rather, these were actual men because God states in verse 3 that he will take away his life giving Spirit from man. Not only has death reigned, the life span of the image bearers will be decreased. Wickedness must be shortened and stopped. Humanity’s sin grieved the Lord so much that he now desired not only to expel his image bearers from the Garden, or to send them wandering aimlessly, but to banish them from his world altogether. Verse 7 describes the process of un-creation, where God’s good world would now be destroyed because of the results of human sinfulness. The end of the serpent’s seed is destruction. Yet for Eve’s seed, there’s hope: God will be gracious upon the one who’ll bring rest to Adam’s descendents, Noah.
Rules for Radicals
It’s now time to retrace our steps within the story of the ruin of paradise by noting how Satan and his followers acted, that is, certain rules that radicals live by. Consider each of these application points not to live out, yet also take note where the indwelling sin from Adam’s blood still flows in your veins today. As we read earlier from Romans 5, “death spread to all men, because all sinned.” We’re all sons of Adam, but only the elect are sons in Christ. As Christ told the Pharisees in John 8, “you are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. Because he was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is the father of lies.” Are you a Pharisee as well? The apostle John further underscores the distinction between the seed of Satan and of Eve in 1 John 3:10: “By this the children of God [Eve’s seed] and the children of the devil are obvious” in their righteous or evil deeds. The question for us in these rules is whether or not they’re something you’re fighting against or something you’re obeying. God’s children will fight against these rules, while Satan’s seed will be characterized by obedience to them.
The first rule is doubting and distorting God’s word: Genesis 3:5-6. The woman plays into Satan’s trap by doubting the goodness of God’s commandments. Her own recounting of them shows a distortion. This is a characteristic mark of Satan and his followers. . . .
Next, followers of Satan blame others: Genesis 3:12-13. They don’t take the blame for their own actions; it’s always someone else’s fault.
The third rule for radicals is to be controlled by sin: Genesis 4:7. Cain could either master sin or let it master him. Those who follow Satan are characterized by their willingness to let sin reign in their life. There’s no thought of sanctification, no prayer for forgiveness, just empty concern expressed in self-pity like Cain, “Protect me, this is too much to bear.” In Genesis 4:23-24 we see that Lamach is controlled by sin so much that he glorifies his polygamy and murder in poetry. The children of the devil filled the earth with their violence so much that their hearts were continually evil all of the time: Genesis 6:5.
Another rule is to engage in sexual immorality: Genesis 4:19. Lamach clearly breaks God’s commandment that marriage is between one man and one woman. He can’t control his desires and must go beyond what God has designed for human welfare and enjoyment. Likewise, his heirs and Seth’s heirs, the “sons of God” engage in immorality: Genesis 6:1-4. The immorality is expressed in verse 2: they chose wives based on beauty alone. The issue wasn’t that they were marrying because by doing so they obey Genesis 1:26-28. The issue is that they were not choosing godly spouses. The godly chose the worldly. What can we learn from this rule? We need to remind ourselves what our marriage points to and is based on: Christ’s love for his church. His love is pure, singular, undivided. His love is redemptive, isn’t based on anything we can give him but on what his costly, life-shedding blood has done for us. Modeling your marriage after Christ’s will guard you from sexually immorality.
The final rule for radicals is to make a name for yourself. The making of names will become more apparent to the storyline of Genesis 1-11 in the next two weeks. But for now, notice how Cain names the city after his own linage, his own son, and how the giant men, the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4 were the men of “renown.” Instead of spreading God’s image throughout the earth, Cain and these men spread their own name and fame. . . .
Rest for the Redeemed
It’s now time to examine the godly responses from the seed of the woman. First, notice that God’s people must rely upon his grace to overcome Satan: Genesis 3:15. God’s children take comfort in Christ’s victory over the great serpent, Satan, at the cross. We live knowing that sin and death don’t have the final word because of what God has done for us in Christ. This hope is what lead Adam to name his wife, Eve, which means mother of all the living: Genesis 3:20. He took hope in God’s graciousness in allowing them to fulfill his commands. We are like Adam, living in a fallen world, relying on God’s grace to make it out of exile into the promised land. God’s grace is also seen in through Lamach (the godly one) in naming his son, Noah, which sounds like the word “rest”. It was through this Noah that God would save humanity by his grace: Genesis 6:8.
The redeemed offer acceptable worship to the Lord: Genesis 4:4. The giving of Abel’s best shows us his heart attitude. Cain, on the other hand, failed in his theology and so failed in his ethics. What we worship tells us where our heart is. The godly will call upon the name of the Lord: Genesis 4:26.
Children of Eve walk with God: Genesis 5:24. This expression, “walk with God,” is what Adam did in the Garden, and Enoch did so in exile. Now, through the power of the Spirit, we can walk with the Lord. This characterizes our life. Satan’s children focus on their own interests, in city building, in revolutions, but we walk with God. Though the new creation is not fully here, we can have a little bit of heaven on earth now because of the Spirit’s indwelling presence. Let this be how others describe you, “he or she walked with God.”
Finally, the redeemed long for rest and redemption given in Genesis 3:15. As Christians, we know that Christ crushed the head of Satan on the cross. But Adam and Eve, Seth, the godly Enoch and Lamachm and Noah had to hope that one day God’s promises would come to pass. We now know who fulfilled that promise and brings us rest from our toil, redemption from our sin. Let us pray that we have their faith, because, like them, we too wait for complete rest, to live in world uninhabited by Satan and his children, regretting paradise lost and awaiting paradise remade.
Benediction: Romans 16:20.
[1] Kenneth A. Matthew, Genesis 1 – 11:26 in The New American Commentary (Broadman & Holman), 253.
Joseph A. Gould
Adam Winters
Adam B. Embry
Jason Adkins
Matthew Crawford
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