Word of Salvation – Vol. 59 No. 14 – August 2009
The Effects Of Sin – Rev. John Haverland
Text: Genesis 3:7-13
Readings: Isaiah 61, Genesis 3:1-13
Theme: Adam and Eve’s sin caused them shame and separated them from God and from each other.
Purpose: To show the profound and far-reaching effects of sin and how God has responded in Christ
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When you get to know people and you look closely at their lives you can see some of the effects and consequences of sin; how it has harmed their own life and the lives of those around them – their families and friends.
The Bible is full of descriptions about the damage sin has done. The first part of this chapter (Genesis 3) described how sin entered the world through the sin and disobedience of Adam and Eve. These following verses we are considering today describe the immediate consequences of their sin. These introduce all the other effects of sin that we see all around us every day.
1. First we notice that sin introduced PERSONAL SHAME. Verse 7: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked.”
Their eyes were opened to what they had done.
Adam and Eve realised they had made a terrible mistake. Immediately they knew the difference between good and evil; but, as we noted last time, this knowledge was the result of personal experience. They knew evil by becoming evil. This was not what Satan had promised and it was not what they had expected.
One important lessonswe can draw from this is that sin will always lead to disappointment. Disobedience will always be an anti-climax.
Think of a young man who is on a restricted licence who decides he will take a passenger and drive outside his set hours – just this once. But he gets caught and is punished with a hefty fine.
Or a group of youth who head off into town for an evening of fun and drinking. They go round the bars and night clubs, drink too much, and get caught in a brawl in the early hours of the morning.
Sin seems attractive at the time but its results will always be disappointing, if not in the short term, certainly in the long term. Remember this in times of temptation.
After their sin Adam and Eve “realised they were naked”.
Earlier, in chapter 2:25, we read that “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.” That is how it was in the perfect world before the fall. There was no sin and no shame. Adam and Eve felt completely at ease with each other, they had nothing to hide, physically or emotionally.
All that changed after their sin. They realised they were naked and they were ill at ease; they were uncomfortable with their nakedness; they knew something was wrong.
This is how it has been since then. In the Bible, nakedness before anyone other than your husband or wife is considered shameful (Gen 9:23, Rev 3:18).
There are people who want to deny this, and there are nudist camps and beaches where people walk around without any clothes. But we all know in ourselves that this is wrong.
In a sinful world we can’t recover the innocence and ease of that original creation. This is why pornography is evil and dangerous – it stimulates lust and evil desires. Let’s be sure to guard ourselves against the temptations of the internet and of magazines. Let’s make every effort to keep our minds and our relationships pure.
Realising they were naked “they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (verse 7).
There have been a lot of jokes about this over the centuries, both in words and pictures. And there is a sense in which this is funny; but not funny, ha ha; rather funny in the sense of it being laughable, ludicrous, pathetic. Their attempts to cover themselves were feeble, pitiful and ineffective. They tried to fix things, to make it right, but it was useless.
That is true of all our human attempts to make things right. Nothing we do can deal effectively with sin; we can’t set things right; we can’t make it better. As we will see later, only God can set matters right and remove the shame of sin. Sin brought shame.
2. Secondly sin ALIENATED THEM FROM GOD.
It separated them from God. Verse 8: They “heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord among the trees of the garden.”
The Lord may have done this each day – to come to speak with them in the garden. We aren’t quite sure how they heard him walking in the garden. God is a Spirit and so he has no body and makes no footsteps.
We do know that they were always glad to see him. Their relationship with the Lord was open and free and uninhibited. He was their Creator and their God and there was nothing between them. They were created to glorify God and to enjoy him and they did that.
Sin changed all that. Now they heard him coming and they hid themselves.
Children will do that when they do something wrong. They will go and hide from their parents, in their room, or outside somewhere.
Thieves and murderers will do that after their crimes – they will go away and hide from the police.
Adam and Eve tried to hide from the Lord.
Literally the Hebrew reads: “…and they hid from the face of the Lord God.” (vs 8b).
If your relationship with someone is poor or broken then you don’t want to be around them, you don’t want to look at them, you don’t want to be face to face. That was certainly true of Adam and Eve. They could not look God in the face. They hid.
This is what God meant when he warned they would “surely die” (2:17). The primary effect of sin is spiritual death, which is a separation from God. Sin makes you turn away from God, to withdraw from him, to retreat, to isolate yourself.
Are you in that position? Are you hiding from God? Are you trying to get away? Do you want to escape from him?
You need to realise that there is no escaping from the Lord; you can’t hide from him; he is everywhere present; he will always find you. (Psalm 139:7-12, Amos 9:2-4).
Their sin separated them from God and it also made them afraid of God. Adam replied to God’s call and said; “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid” (vs 10).
This is the first mention of fear in the Bible. Before this they did not know what fear was; they had never experienced this emotion or feeling. But now that they had sinned against the Lord they were guilty and they feared the consequences of that.
Jesus explained this to Nicodemus: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:20).
The Book of Revelation describes the fear of unbelievers on the day of Christ’s return; “They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!'” (Rev 6:16).
This is an understandable fear. If you are a sinner separated from God then you should be afraid of God; you will want to hide from him, even though that will be futile.
They were separated from God and were afraid of him and Adam blamed God.
The Lord questioned Adam – verse 11: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
Adam replied; “The woman you put here with me….”
Notice his change in tune. When he first saw Eve he was really excited. This was the one!
And he was very thankful to the Lord for providing him with such a beautiful and fitting companion.
But here he blamed God for giving him “the woman”; it was God’s fault; he made her and he put her next to him!
Ever since then people have been blaming God. Someone’s wife is killed in a car accident, baby twins are bashed to death, a famine grips central Africa, the war claims thousands of lives in Iraq, and people ask; “Where is God? What is he doing? Why doesn’t he do something about all this?!” They blame him for what goes wrong in their own lives and in the world.
But James warns us against this: “…each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15).
The blame for sin and evil in the world rests with us – with you and me. Don’t pass the buck to God. When you sin you need to face up to that, acknowledge it, confess it to God and repent of it. That is the only way to deal with it.
3. We have see that Adam and Eve’s sin brought personal shame and that it separated them from God. It also, has a third effect: SIN SEPARATED THEM FROM EACH OTHER.
After blaming God for giving him this woman Adam then went on to blame her as well: “she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (12b). And then Eve blamed the serpent.
I’m sure you recognise this because we do this all the time. Everyone of us has tried to pass the blame to someone else.
Children do this: “It was her idea! He made me do it! It wasn’t my fault!”
It happens in marriage. This first marital argument has been replayed in marriages over and over since then, over all sorts of major and minor issues.
A husband and wife get lost while driving. “Why weren’t you watching where you were going?!” asks the wife. “Didn’t you notice the signs?!” The husband counters, “You should have been watching the map and told me there was a turn off!”
We are always trying to pass the buck, to wriggle out of something, to avoid being blamed. All of us are loathe to take the responsibility for something that goes wrong. It is always someone else fault.
Our society has cultivated and even encouraged this “victim mentality”: “Poor me, it really isn’t my fault.”
The homosexual blames his genes.
The rapist blames his parents.
The murderer blames his deprived background.
The thief blames his poverty.
What about you? Who are you trying to blame? Whose fault is it? Why are you the way you are? Will you blame your parents, or your upbringing, or society, or the government, or the church?
Or will you take responsibility for your own sin? Will you accept that you are a sinner? Will you acknowledge that you are to blame?
And will you do that before God?
Will you confess your sin to the Lord?
Will you be honest with him?
David wrote in Psalm 32: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” (v5).
Have you done that? Will you do that?
This is one requirement for taking part in the Lord’s Supper when we celebrate it – you must recognise your sin and confess it to God. Without that there is no forgiveness.
But forgiveness doesn’t rest on your confession of sin. It rests on what God has done for you in and through the Lord Jesus.
God promised his coming way back in the Garden of Eden. Already in this chapter, directly after this first sin, we see the evidence of God’s grace.
Notice in verse 9 that God called out to Adam; “Where are you?” God, of course, knew he was hiding among the trees – but he wanted Adam to come and face him. Adam and Eve hid from him but God went looking for them. He took the initiative.
It is the same today. We hide from him; he comes looking for us. He is the “Hound of Heaven”, as someone has described him – on our trail, seeking us out till he finds us; like the good shepherd looking for that lost sheep. This is grace.
Verse 15 records the first promise of the gospel – that promise of God about the Lord Jesus who would come and crush the head of the serpent. Jesus himself suffered a painful blow, but in the end he defeated Satan and triumphed over the powers of darkness.
And finally, notice in verse 21 that “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
Their own attempts to cover themselves were pitiful and inadequate. So the Lord did what they could not do.
That is also true spiritually. Your own attempts to deal with sin are pitiful and inadequate.
You cannot cover over sin – it will always crawl out from underneath and rear its ugly head.
You cannot get rid of sin in your life.
You cannot conquer it.
You cannot defeat Satan on your own.
You are constantly fighting a losing battle.
But God has done what you cannot do.
He sent his own Son to take your sin on himself and to die on the cross in your place so that you can be forgiven.
And God does more: he also gives you the righteousness of Jesus. He credits that to you.
Isaiah spoke of that in Is 61:10 – “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.”
This picture is repeated in the Book of Revelation where the great multitude of people standing before God’s throne are dressed in white robes; “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
We who believe can look forward to the day when we will see God’s face in the Lord Jesus Christ. We will see him face to face. There will be no shame, no separation, no blame.
Instead there will be an eternal fellowship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, in the perfection and beauty of a new heaven and a new earth.
Amen.