LIFE LESSONS
ADAM AND EVE
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 3:1-24
AUGUST 25, 2002
Where was the Garden of Eden? Was it in Mesopotamia, as the designation of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates in Genesis, chapter 2, would seem to indicate? Is it still there? Is it still in Mesopotamia, hidden, still guarded by the Cherubim, by the flaming sword so that mankind cannot re-enter it? Or has it been removed from this time-space continuum? Is it in another dimension? Does it wait for the people of God? Was it the garden that Christ referred to when He spoke to the thief on the cross and mentioned “paradise”? Does it still contain the “tree of knowledge” and the “tree of life”? Why is the tree of life also mentioned in Revelation in conjunction with the Holy City of Jerusalem, the heavenly city?
What was the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve partook of? Was it an apple? Was it a pomegranate? Was it a fig? What about the talking snake? Did Satan simply speak through a snake as God once spoke to Balaam through a donkey? Or did He actually incarnate himself as this reptile? What about the rib taken from Adam and used to form the woman, Eve? Was it a top rib? A bottom rib? A middle rib? Was it from the left ribcage or the right ribcage?
How about Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve? Where did they get their wives? Did they marry their sisters? Who were these people who were trying to murder Cain so that God had to put a protective mark upon him? Where was the mysterious land of Nod?
This morning I will seek to answer none of those questions. You see, the answers to those questions really are not that important. But what we’re going to do is enter this story of Adam and Eve and see what God is saying to us. I want you to know, for Bible scholars, the story of Adam and Eve is one of the most controversial stories in the Bible. There are some Bible scholars who view the story of Adam and Eve as parabolic, like the Parable of the Prodigal Son or the Parable of the Good Samaritan. God simply wants us to understand the message of the story. There are other Bible scholars who view the story of Adam and Eve as allegorical, so that every detail in the story represents or symbolizes some theological or anthropological truth, so that every detail of the story tells us something through symbolism about God or man.
There are other Bible scholars who view the story of Adam and Eve as historical narrative, so that every detail in the story should be taken literally and factually. Certainly, in the Bible, God uses a variety of literary genre. God uses parable in the Bible, God uses allegory, God uses historical narrative, and God uses poetic and apocalyptic literature. He uses a variety of literary genre. But what is important as we begin with the story of Adam and Eve is to understand this: The story is from God. It is inspired of God. It is God-breathed, and it is Holy Scripture.
So, we enter this story seeking to understand what God is saying to us, and I believe God is clearly saying three things. First of all, God is saying that humanity is the crown of His creation. Nothing on this earth is more precious to Christ, more precious to God, than you. Humanity is the crown of God’s creation. It begins in Genesis, chapter 1, with the imago Dei. “God created them in His image, and in His likeness. Male and female created He them in the image of God,. The imago Dei is unique to humankind. We are special.
God cares about animals. God cares about ecology. He cares about the planet, but most of all He cares about you. In Genesis, chapter 1, and in Genesis, chapter 2, as we begin the story of Adam and Eve, dominion is given to humanity. Dominion is given to mankind—dominion over the earth, over the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea. This is a marvel and a great responsibility.
The Psalmist marvels at God’s elevation of man. So, we have Psalm 8 where the Psalmist writes, “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth. Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouths of babes and infants. Thou hast established a bulwark against Thy foes to still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon, and the stars, which You have established, what is man that you are mindful of him? Mere man, that you care about him? And yet You have created him little less than God. You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the work of your hands, over the cattle and over the beasts of the field and the fish of the sea and everything that moves along the paths of the sea. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth.”
And so, the Psalmist marveled that man is the crown of God’s creation, that God cares uniquely about us. How about you? Do you care about people? Do you care more about people than you do animals? Do you care more about people than you do nature? Do you really view human life as sacred? Do you value ALL people?
Four years ago, a woman from Hempstead, New York, on Long Island along with her husband decided to take a little vacation down to Atlantic City. They were going to do a little gambling (not a lot of gambling). They were just going to play the slot machines and do some lightweight stuff, put some quarters in some slot machines. So, there they were in Atlantic City four years ago. She was playing the slot machines, putting some quarters in, and she won big time. The quarters just came gushing out and filled her bucket. She said to her husband, “Can you believe this?” She said, “I’m going to go up to the hotel room and I’m going to lock this in our room.”
She went to get on the elevator. The elevator door opened and there were two Black men standing there, one about average size and one an African American guy that is just huge. She thinks, “Boy, these guys look like the criminal element. They look like they might be crooks.” She is afraid and she is also kind of embarrassed because she knows she is kind of stereotyping. She is embarrassed that she even has these thoughts, but she thinks, “They might take my money. I’m not going to get on the elevator.” But then one of the Black men put his hand out and keeps the elevator door from closing. He says, “Ma’am, did you want to get in?” She felt obligated so she went into the elevator. She was afraid and nervous, and she could hear her heart beating. She is thinking that they would rob her. The doors of the elevator closed and then a strange thing happened. It just stayed there. She is panicked. She is thinking, “Here I am with these two criminals, they’re going to steal my money and do who knows what to me.”
Suddenly she hears one of the Black guys say, “Hit the floor.” Suddenly she just drops to the floor. She does not even hesitate. She just drops to the floor and the bucket of change just scatters all over the floor. The quarters are everywhere on the elevator floor. She is doing a face plant on the floor of the elevator. The Black guy says, “Ma’am, when I said hit the floor, I was asking my bodyguard to push the button on the elevator to the floor our room is on.”
These two Black men got down and began to help her put her quarters back in the bucket. They put all of the quarters back. She was so embarrassed. Then they get the elevator to work and go to her floor. She looks kind of shook up and she is so embarrassed. She is not very stable, and they helped her to her room. They helped her down the hallway to her room. She opens the door to go inside, and they hand her the bucket with all the quarters and wish her well. She closes the door and leans against it. She is just so embarrassed, and she can hear these two guys laughing as they are returning to the elevator.
She goes back downstairs and tells her husband what happened and how embarrassed she is. They went to sleep that night. The next morning there is a knock on the door and it’s the florist. The florist has brought her a dozen roses and a hundred-dollar bill attached to each rose—$1,200 and a note. The note says, “Thanks for giving us the best laugh we’ve had in months.” It was signed Eddie Murphy and his bodyguard.
It’s kind of an amazing story, but it is a crazy world. There are a lot of stereotypes out there about people. Some of them are racist. How do you view people? Do you value people above anything else in this world? Do you realize that Christ tells us that in the church there is no room for prejudice? “Show no partiality,” the Bible says, “as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory.” The Bible says that “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. “The Bible says, “God did make from one man, from Adam, all the nations of men, all the races of men to dwell upon the earth.” Do you love them all? Do you view them all as equal before God?
Adam and Eve had an easier situation in the beginning. What few people there were looked alike. Surely, they had to teach their children to view human life as sacred. Surely, they taught their kids to value humankind and to respect and treat all people as made in the image of God.
It is more complex today, as we have developed, by the will of God and the design of God and the plan of God, into many nations and many races. We are called to love them all.
Do you love people? If you love people, you are going to want to enter into ministry. The reason we invited you to teach Sunday school this morning is we assume you love kids. You love children, you love these little human beings, you view them as sacred, and you want to help. That is why we invite you to teach Sunday school. The reason we invited you today to be a small group leader is because you care about people, and you know that they are precious to God.
Secondly from the Adam and Eve story, we have this teaching that humanity is fallen. Humanity is the crown of God’s creation, but humanity is fallen. This is at the very core of the story of Adam and Eve. Sin came into the world. Satan came to them as the tempter. He said, “The forbidden fruit is good for food. It is a delight to the eye. It is to be desired so as to make one wise. You will be like God.” So, in the words of scripture and in the words of John, “Satan appealed to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” and Adam and Eve fell into disobedience (because sin is disobedience).
The Bible says sin has spread to all mankind and all of us are in Adam and we are all sinners in desperate need of grace. “There are none righteous, no, not one.” How do you feel about that? The fact that while you are made in the image of God and the imago Dei is at least residual in you, there is something of God in you, at the same time, you also have a sin nature? You are born with a sin nature. You have abused your freedom, and you are culpable before God. How do you feel about that? That God has commanded you to do things you have not done? You have also done things God has told you not to do. That sin begins in the heart, as Jesus tells us, inwardly. There’s none righteous.
Adam and Eve were filled with shame and guilt. They became aware of their nakedness, and they sought to hide themselves from the presence of God amongst the trees of the garden.
People still do that today. People are still hiding from God. I think sometimes atheists and agnostics are trying to hide God from themselves. Same thing. How about you? How do you handle sin? In the world’s religions, there are a variety of ways. Some of the religions of the world practice denial with regard to sin. Certainly, this is true in certain expressions of Buddhism and Hinduism, some of the eastern religions. There is really, in their teaching, no such thing as sin. We are just all in process. We are all progressing toward moksha or Nirvana through many lifetimes. We are either progressing or regressing, but there is not really sin. You do not have to take sin seriously.
Most Buddhists and most Hindus know in their heart it is not true, and they feel the guilt and the shame that Adam and Eve felt. That is why millions of Hindus every year flood the Ganges River in India seeking some purification, coming in repentance, seeking some forgiveness, aware of their sin.
I had to laugh a few weeks ago when I was reading about the town council in the city of Telluride, Colorado. Telluride is kind of a different place. I think a lot of mountain towns are kind of into New Age stuff. They have Tibetan flags on Victorian porches. They have Native American Indian medicine men bless the ski slopes each year. At the town council, which meets in Rebecca Hall in Telluride, they burn sage sticks before every town council meeting, seeking to remove evil vibrations from the air.
Recently, according to The Denver Post, at the Telluride town council meetings, there have been a lot of arguments. People have been mean to each other and they have had people just walk out. There has been a lot of anger, so they have hired a shaman to come in, a guy named Christopher Beaver. He burned imported menthol. He wafted the smoke of it through all of Rebecca Hall, seeking to purge the hall in a smudging ceremony, seeking to purge the hall of evil vibrations.
Has it ever occurred to the town council that maybe the problem is in them? Has it ever occurred to them that maybe it is old-fashioned sin? That it has something to do with the sin nature? There needs to be some repentance and some change and some transformation. A smudging ceremony is not going to do it. Cleansing the air is not going to do it. But a lot of people are kind of in denial with regard to sin. Some religions teach that.
Then some religions are really into discipline. They really seek to overcome sin by the power of your own self-discipline. I think this is true, or has been true historically, in certain forms of Judaism. Certainly, the Pharisees thought they could overcome sin through the power of their own self-discipline. Jesus condemned them for their self-righteousness and told them that sin was in the heart.
Certainly, in Islam today there is this effort to overcome sin through self-discipline. There are the five disciplines in Islam, the five pillars: the shahada, the salat, the zakat, Ramadan, and the hajj. It’s all part of the discipline of Islam. The public confession (which amounts to evangelism), the ritualistic prayers rendered five times a day, the almsgiving, the fasting in the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca and the circling of the Kaaba, the kissing of the black stone which allegedly fell from heaven. It’s just a small part of their discipline.
There is this thought that through self-control and self-discipline we can overcome sin. Certainly, there is some good in that because we need self-control. If ever a culture needed self-control and self-discipline, it is this culture. Frankly and fairly, Islam has come into many of the urban areas in America and offered young men some self-control they haven’t had before, and some young women too. But no amount of self-control is going to give you victory over sin.
I was recently reading a book by Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History and the Last Man.” He wrote another book called “Trust.” Francis Fukuyama is Senior Social Scientist for the RAND Corporation. He’s dabbled in politics, in the academic world, and written a number of books. He’s a brilliant man. He argues that any society, any nation that seeks to govern morality from the top down through more and more laws and more and more litigation, is on its way to ruin. He says that a nation that is healthy and a culture that is healthy the morality needs to be monitored from the bottom up where it comes from the people, from their convictions, from their belief, from their sense of community and the values they hold together, and that they believe in this morality so much that they’re willing to sacrifice for it and to exercise discipline in the pursuit of it. Certainly, he is right. And by what he has said, this nation is in a whole lot of trouble. Certainly, we need self-control. But self-control is not enough. It is not going to give us victory over sin.
I was reading an article in Parade Magazine. I do not know whether you ever read the column called, “Ask Marilyn.” It is a column by Marilyn Vos Savant. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, she has the highest IQ in the world. Of course, intelligence is difficult to measure, and it has many dimensions. Intelligence does not necessarily prove to be synonymous with wisdom. She has this column, and I noticed that this question… I just read this. “In your opinion, has morality in the U.S. gotten better or worse since the 50s?” This is her answer. “I think society’s ethical behavior, for example the treatment of minorities and women, has made a great leap forward. But personal morality has taken a nosedive since the 1950s.”
What a dichotomy. Our public policy has grown more noble as our private behavior has become more and more base. I think that is a penetrating insight. Is it not true that we have not improved much from the Garden? In terms of personality morality, we are no better off than Adam and Eve. We have that same rebellion against God and the same problem of sin. We are told in Genesis, chapter 3, “the penalty for sin is death”—physical death and ultimately spiritual death.
But it all paves the way for the rest of the Bible and the rest of scripture, which leads to the cross and the real solution for sin, where Jesus Christ came and He died for you and He died for me in substitutionary atonement, paying the penalty for your sins and for my sins, dying in our stead. When we come to Him in faith and receive Him as Savior and Lord, we find forgiveness and we are made clean. We are washed and regenerated. We enter the family of God, and we are given new powers for sanctification. This is the message of scripture. Mankind is created in the image of God. Humanity is created in the image of God, but humanity has fallen. And it all leads to the need for the cross, for the Savior, for the Redeemer.
But there’s a third and last message from the story of Adam and Eve. This third message has to do with marriage. They were the first married couple in scripture. We are told marriage is sacred. You have that amazing story where Adam is alone—Genesis, chapter 2. God says, “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper good for him.”
Animals are brought before Adam, and he names them and he finds no fulfillment in them. He is still lonely. God causes a deep sleep to come upon the man. He takes the rib, and from the rib He forms the woman. You see in this story so beautifully their oneness, their intimacy. The man says, “At last. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” Then the great theological declaration: “For this reason, a man leaves his mother and father, cleaves unto his wife, and the two become one flesh.”
Jesus quotes Genesis 2 in the Adam and Eve story. Jesus said, “Whom God hath joined together, let no one put asunder.” The establishment of the covenant, the holy divine covenant of marriage. What a gift from God it is.
Some of you are single and singleness is not a disease. God loves single people the same way that He loves married people. God calls some people to be single, but that is rare, because God calls most people to be married. Most of us are desperately lonely without the fulfillment of that marriage relationship.
Glen Goldie is our Minister of Education here at Cherry Hills Community Church and an old friend of mine. I have known Glen since elementary school. We grew up together. We were roommates in college. Glen married Diane in his junior year of college. Glen was one of seven close friends that I kind of hung out with at Westmont College. All seven of them were married by my senior year. I was the only one who remained unmarried. I remember I just did not get it. Glen was married to Diane. We had always gone bowling together. Each week we had this competition, Glen and I against another couple of guys. I taught bowling at Westmont College. We kind of loved the competition. We would go to the bowling alley about midnight and bowl until about 3:00 in the morning. After Glen got married, I would just call him like I always did. I would call him at midnight and say, “Hey, let’s go bowling!” There would be a little hesitation on the phone. Then he would say, “Okay,” and then we would go out and we’d bowl until about 3:00 in the morning. I just did not understand marriage and obviously Glen did not either… Diane kind of explained it to him. I just remember though how hard it was wanting to be married, wanting that fulfillment and being single.
I remember after my senior year, as I was in graduate school, walking on the beach in Santa Barbara in the wintertime in the midst of a storm. I was there all alone. I had a moment that was deeply spiritual for me and very intimate with God. It was a moment of surrender where I said, “Lord Jesus, I’ll live for the rest of my life single if you want me to. I will go where you want me to go. I will do what you want me to do. I can live without a wife. I can’t live without You.” The Lord knew that I meant it. It was a turning point in my life. But the Lord also knew that I needed a wife. I just thank God in seminary as God brought Barb and I together. What an incredible gift. Thirty-one years last week we have been married. What a gift marriage is from God.
I just want to read you a couple of quotes from kids before we close. These are actual questions asked to kids and the answers they gave. “How do you decide who to marry?” “You’ve got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports and she should keep the chips and dip coming.” That is from Allen, age 10. Allen’s going to learn some things later on.
“No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.” That is from Kirsten, age 10.
“What is the right age to get married?” “Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person forever by then.” That’s Camille. She is ten.
“No age is good to get married at. You’ve got to be a fool to get married.” Freddy, age 6.
“What do most people do on a date?” “Dates are for having fun and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.” That is from Lynette, age 8.
“On the first date they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” Martin, age 10.
“When is it okay to kiss someone?” “The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn’t want to mess with that.” Curt, age 7.
Howard, who is 8 years old, says this: “The rule goes like this. If you kiss somebody, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It’s just the right thing to do.”
“Is it better to be single or married?” “I do not know which is better, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m never going to have sex with my wife. I don’t want to get all grossed out.” Theodore, age 8.
This is from Anita, age 9. “It’s better for girls to be single but not boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.”
Then finally, this. “How would you make a marriage work?” “Tell your wife that she looks pretty even if she looks like a truck.” Ricky, age 10.
Courtship is not easy, and marriage can be difficult. But what God wants you to understand is it is all worth the work. It is all worth the effort. It is all designed by God. There is a fulfillment that comes through marriage that is not found in any other earthly relationship. I just know in my life with Barb the joys are doubled and the pain is halved because I am going through life with her. I hope that you will really make the effort to cultivate your marriage.
As we conclude, I do want to just mention one little brief thing. I read this last week about Jack Benny. You know Jack Benny was a famous comedian and a famous entertainer. He loved his wife very, very much. He was a very shy man. When he first met the woman who was to become his wife, he was too shy to ask her for a date. He kept trying to ask her out on a date and he was just too nervous. He would stutter. And so, he sent her roses every day. Finally, she said to him, “Jack, what’s it all about?” He just kind of stuttered and stammered and finally asked her out on a date. They fell in love, and they were married, but you know what? He never ceased to send her roses. He sent her roses every day of their life together. Every day, roses were delivered to the house.
Is that incredible? Of course, when he died and she was in tears, the very next day there was a knock at the door and a florist was there with roses again. She said, “You don’t understand. My husband passed away.” He said, “Oh, I know that. Don’t you understand he arranged for you to get roses the rest of your life as long as you live?” An amazing thing. Most of us could never afford to do that, but you can think about what you can do for your wife or your husband every day as long as you live. God will bless you. Let’s close with a word of prayer.