Sermon Text: Genesis 2:23-25; 3:8-15
23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Morning Message:
I think that it is easy, as we go through life, to forget how perfect our Creator is. We live in a broken world. We see all the pain and devastation that takes place in this world. It becomes easy to blame God, after all, as God He could control things and make all the devastation disappear. This is the argument that we, as Christians, get most often from the world. How could a loving God allow such things? God is love and you will find no greater love than His, but there is so much more to this than what we, as God’s creation, understand about love. For us love is simply about the emotion. We feel love so we base everything on what we feel. This is a very superficial way to live and look at love. The closest that we can come to understanding God’s love is what we read in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 4-8, Love is patient, kind, not proud, does not envy or boast, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, does not delight in evil, rejoices in the truth, protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, love never fails. We need to keep all of this in mind when we think about God’s perfect love.
Today I want us to look at God’s perfect design for this world and for mankind. I love to preach from this scripture in Genesis because it is so black and white and so straight forward that there is no mistaking its meaning or purpose for our lives. What we see in these first two verses is what God’s design for marriage is. Marriage is one man and one woman united spiritually, emotionally, physically, publicly, and legally in a lifetime bond of loyal love. God designed marriage: 1. To be a partnership between one man and one woman. True marriage is a bond of three, man, woman, and God. 2. To be a permanent union. A marriage between God’s people is permanent. There is nothing sacred about marriage in and of itself. It is the presence of God that makes it holy and permanent. 3. To produce spiritual unity between husband and wife. What is the difference between being married and living together? Besides the obvious, there is only spiritual unity in marriage. 4. To provide for the procreation of children. Unfortunately, this one is never thought of in today’s society. 5. To positively channel sexual and emotional energy. Once again that one has been left so far behind in our society that it has become an odd thought. 6. To serve as a principal building block of society. Our society is in such a mess because it is build on false relationships. 7. To be a picture of His relationship with Israel and of Christ’s relationship with the church. God put in place, from the very beginning, a union that would represent His love for His people and Jesus’ love for His followers, the church.
Verse 25: Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. I sometimes joke with couples that I counsel for marriage in order to make a point about pre-marriage and post-marriage when it comes to this verse. What I want you to see today is the connection between how Adam and Eve acted before the fall and after the fall. Before sin had entered into the world, into God’s perfect design, there was no guilt because there was no sin. As God’s people, you know when there is sin in your life because, whether or not you want to admit it, you feel shame. Adam and Eve walked freely with God every day and walking with God was as natural as walking with one another. But once sin entered into God’s perfect design there was fear; suddenly God was to be feared and hidden from. When sin is present in our lives our communion with God is broken, and our relationship with Him becomes strained.
The sin was not in the fruit that they ate. Their sin and ours is in disobeying God’s commands. Adam and Eve could do nothing more than try and pass the blame. The woman that you gave me God, she made me do it. The serpent that you created God, he tricked me. There is no excuse for disobeying God. God’s perfect design had been broken into pieces. The intimate communion between man and God had been broken. When they believed Satan’s lie, their knowledge was corrupted and their understanding of God damaged. What God had said became twisted in their minds. This is what the devil will do to us if we let him. Perhaps most importantly, instead of knowing life as they once had known it with God, they began to know death. This is why the world is in the shape that it is in. Death, disease, sickness, hunger, starvation, natural disasters, all because we now live in a sinful, dying world. This is no longer God’s perfect design. Before any of this took place, God planned for our rescue. Jesus was coming to save us before we ever needed it. We can regain everything that Adam and Eve lost by simply accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. God’s perfect design has been made perfect again through the blood of our Savior.
In Christ’s Love and Peace
Pastor Bob
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