Driven to Paradise

About this sermon

Introduction: Where we are headed, we have been. What redeemed humanity’s future is to be is not completely disassociated from where it all began. In one sense, where we are headed, we have never been before. It is higher, it is better, than man has ever known. But in another sense, there is a strange familiarity to the place where God is taking His people. When come to Genesis 3:20, the fall has already happened. The man and the woman have died. God told the truth. Satan lied. Satan’s lies were believed. God’s warning was ignored, and His commandment violated. The curses have been pronounced. What was promised by Satan, but not the half of it revealed, has now been experienced by man and the results are devastating. Life as it had once been is gone. Life, as we could have wished would never have been, has come. And yet there was grace. God has promised a coming deliverer (3:15). God would provide a picture of that deliverance (vs.21). Man attempted to cover his shame with the work of his own hands (3:7). God rejected the work of man’s hands and will clothe him through the shedding of blood. God made the coverings for man’s shame. And then, in the 22nd verse, we meet with a strange grace. It is grace upon grace, but it doesn’t at first appear to be grace. God drives the man and the woman from the garden of Eden. He “sent them out” (vs.23). He “drove the man out” (vs.24). And what I want us to see, this morning, is that when God drove them from the garden of Eden, He was driving them out on behalf of a better garden of Eden. God was driving them to paradise. This morning I want us to see the grace of God in three movements. (1) The Grace of God in Redemption (vs.20-21) (2) The Grace of God in Preservation (vs.22-23) (3) The Grace of God in Promised Return (vs.24) THE GRACE OF GOD IN REDEMPTION (vs.20-21) Adam and Eve disobeyed God and met with the penalty that God promised. God could have executed them physically, at the very moment their sin was committed, but instead they were thrust into a living death. Spiritual death, joined to physical death, moving toward everlasting death. Pain was the outcome of their disobedience. The woman would meet with pain at the very point of the center of her existence, in the bearing of children and the raising of the next generation. Man would meet with pain at the very point of the center of his existence, in the working of God’s earth, and the providing for his household. Futility would now belong to the world in which man lived. THE GIFT OF FAITH And yet, right in the midst of the pronouncement of the curses, the grace of God was shining. The promise of a redeemer who would be wounded and yet conquer, crushing the serpent’s head, was proclaimed in the 15th verse. The see that promise, the receive that promise, to embrace that promise, would require the gift of faith. Apart from the new birth, as Jesus told Nicodemus, there is no way to see or to enter the kingdom of God. ESV John 3:3 Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. There are indications in the first part of the first book of the Bible, that God began a history of gracious redemption with the very first man and woman. There are indications that God granted Adam and Eve the faith needed to see and embrace the promise of the Redeemer. ADAM’S FAITH (vs.20) Adam gave Eve her name. The name Eve is (חַוָּה) meaning life or living. The Bible tells us that Adam gave her this name because she was the mother of all the living. Kent Hughes commenting on this writes: Adam named his wife Life because she would become the mother of all the living! Adam was able to do this because he had a very precise awareness of the overall significance of God’s words to his wife. Adam had listened closely to God’s speech to his spouse. He understood that one of her offspring would crush the head of the snake (v. 15). He knew that his wife’s pain in childbearing meant that a people would follow. Indeed, the tense Adam used to declare his faith is the prophetic perfect, indicating that her becoming the mother of all the living “is as good as done.” Adam’s declaration was an overwhelming shout of hope. The name Eve celebrates the survival of the human race and victory over death. The reformer Philip Melanchthon called Eve “the seal of grace.” Adam is saying, in effect, this is not the end. God has given us hope. Mankind shall live. A redeemer is coming.

Topics

• Heaven & Eternity