Comfort, Care, and Hope: Genesis 3:20-24 (Sermon)

WELCOME 

I shared this with the men at TM4L yesterday. Do you know who this person is? 

This is Gina Rinehart. She is Australia’s wealthiest person and the world’s 74th wealthiest person. She has an estimated $ 25.2 billion. She emailed me the other day. This is what she wrote:

“I am Gina Rinehart, an Australian business Woman, Investor, and executive Chairwoman of Hancock Prospecting, a privately-owned mineral exploration and extraction company. I’m one of the owners of Hancock Prospecting. I gave away 25 percent of my personal wealth to charity. And I also pledge to give away the rest of 25% this year 2026 to individuals. I have decided to donate US$2.000.000,00 to you. If you are interested in my donation, do contact me for more info.

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WOW! What should I do with this email? If I give away 10% of my income to church, that means I would give the church $200,000! What should I do? Look at who it is from? Gina Rinehart<swiftpost995@inyafacefightproductions.com - This is a scam.

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I share this because, as silly as this ludicrous email is, we can get our hopes up about so many things that won’t ultimately satisfy. We can put our hope in a political party or person. We can put our hope in earning lots of money. We can put our hope even in being religious. Today, we are going to come face to face with our great-great-great-great ancestors, Adam and Eve, and their hope, and see our own.

TEXT 

I am going to have J.K. read for us. Please stand with me in honor of God’s Word.

The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20–24, ESV)

PRAYER 

Thanks. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we need you. Thank you for being faithful to your Word. We need your mercy and kindness. I need it. You know all things and control all things. You allowed our ancestors to choose evil. Since then, we have a bent toward the broken. We need your comfort and care. Help us to know your Word, apply it to our lives, and walk in the mercy of each day. We pray this in Jesus’s name, amen. You may be seated.

CONTEXT 

This is our fifth and final week in Genesis Chapter 3. We are plowing ahead, covering foundational material for the rest of the Bible. Genesis is the book of beginnings. We see

• How the universe began,

• How we began,

• And how sin began.

God gave our ancestors one thing not to do, and guess what? They did it. How did that turn out? Bad. God promised a consequence: death. They got it immediately, spiritually speaking, but not physically. Physical death came later. God brought the consequences first on the serpent, then on the woman, and then on man.

STRUCTURE & MAIN IDEA 

The passage breaks down into three parts. (I took Pastor Mike’s structure, with his permission):

Re-Naming in Hope vs. 20

Re-Covering in Mercy vs. 21,

And Re-Moving in Judgment 22–24 

God comforts and cares for his people, shaping where we should find hope. If you have your Bibles, first let’s look at verse 20. 

AUTHOR

“The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20, ESV). 

Who was writing this? [A narrator.] Tradition and textual evidence suggest that Moses was the author. He spent forty years with God in the wilderness on his way to the Promised Land. God revealed his Word to him privately, which he then communicated to God’s chosen people, Israel. Moses was telling his people what came after God gave Adam and Eve consequences for their disobedience. 

RE-NAMING IN HOPE 

Adam renamed his wife. He had already called her “woman,” the word for counterpart, describing her origin. God made her out of part of Adam, his rib. Perhaps Adam’s first name for her was generic and categorical, while Eve, her second name, was personal. Eve meant, “mother of all living.” That name carries a superlative degree. Ironically, she was not a mother at the time of naming. I believe Adam is hoping it would be so. It was prophetic. But his hope was not baseless, vain, or improbable. God had told Adam to be fruitful and multiply. That hadn’t happened yet. God also said the woman would have offspring, and that when she had children, the process would be painful, according to his judgment. Adam’s naming seemed to exercise a positive faith ensconced in God’s words. So Adam gave Eve a label of honor. Incidentally, God didn’t stop or correct Adam. Why? Because Adam was correct. God had warned Adam that on the day he would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die. He died spiritually speaking, but not physically. God didn’t give him the punishment he deserved. He showed him mercy. God allowed Adam and his wife to enjoy his blessings. And their love for each other will fertilize into more love and life in the coming chapters. And you and I are evidence of it. And that is comforting. And God allowed Adam to keep hoping in this way and re-name his wife. 

PERSONALIZE

Where do you place your hope? Are you banking on Social Security, a family member’s inheritance, or your 401 (k)? Are you hoping your spouse will come around or your kid will grow up? Are you hoping that one day you will not fall prey to the same sin over and over? It is great to dream, plan, and hope. We can have hopes and dreams and aspirations. But ultimately, they can’t replace hoping in God and his Word. Adam seems to recall God’s Word, where he had been listening to his wife and his own sinful desires before. Our foundational hope should be in God and his Word. 

RE-COVERING IN MERCY

But wait, there is more to this passage. Jump to verse 21: Re-Covering in Mercy:

“And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21, ESV). 

The LORD made clothes for Adam and Eve. You might ask, “Didn’t they already have clothes?” Yup. You are correct. Adam and Eve, in shame, made garments out of fig leaves. And if they were actual fig leaves, they were not comfortable; they were itchy. Instead, God killed an innocent animal and made presumably better clothing—the innocent for the guilty. Blood was spilled to cover their shame. Would you rather wear clothing from Walmart or Patagonia? Would you rather wear a Dollar General shirt (and I shop at both stores, by the way) or wear something from a high-end clothing store? Do you think Adam’s design and material were better than God’s? I would say God’s was better. And why would God do this for him and her? Could it be that God cared for them? God didn’t need humans to look a certain way or for them to survive frostbite or windburn. I believe this gift expressed his comfort and care and foreshadowed the blood of another innocent animal, the Lamb of God, his one and only Son, Jesus. We have a loving God. Even his discipline shows his goodness. He is the God we can put our hope in. 

HEBREWS 

The author of Hebrews states this care this way, 

            For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, 

      and chastises every son whom he receives.” 

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:6–11, ESV)

If I love my kids, I will say the hard things at times. And I do. And the kids that are not my kids, I let things go. I especially love my kids. And in the same way, God re-covers his children in his mercy. 

PERMISSION 

So, God re-covers them in mercy. God cares for his children. He sees and knows. He provides. He is and was compassionate and merciful. He comforts his people. 

PSALM 103

Psalm 103 tells us: 

            The LORD is merciful and gracious, 

      slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 

            He will not always chide, 

      nor will he keep his anger forever. 

            He does not deal with us according to our sins, 

      nor repay us according to our iniquities. (Psalm 103:8–10, ESV)

This is the God we worship, adore, love, and serve. And he hasn’t changed. Now, Adam trusted God’s voice when he named Eve. Adam is not acting out of Eve’s instructions or the serpent’s. And God demonstrates his mercy in allowing this re-naming and his re-covering.

RE-MOVING IN JUDGMENT

Now, turn to verse 22. We get to the final point: Re-Moving in Judgment, God’s correction.

“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22, ESV). 

Stop there. (You may notice this is another example where God refers to himself in the plural. This is the royal use of the third person. “Let us.” What was God saying? This may be a trinitarian shadow, or it may not.) But what is the point of this passage? Is it to prove the Trinity or lay the groundwork for it? Let’s focus on the aim. God recognized what Satan had said: that Eve would become like him, knowing good and evil. He was correct in that. Eve had learned agency through her disobedience to God’s Word. She decided for herself what was right and wrong, and so did Adam. Afterward, they regretted their decision. They saw how their choice was not in their best interest. We see this not directly, but indirectly in their hiding and blame-shifting. They knew that they had chosen poorly. And God gently confronted them, instead of blowing them up with a drone strike. They tried to hide and point fingers; God just gently asked them questions. He wasn’t being a pushover. He was smarter than them. He caught them. He knew. He saw. But he lovingly gave them consequences, and in our passage, the fallout of the fall continued. He was going to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever.

TREE OF LIFE 

The Bible mentions this tree several times. In Proverbs, it refers to the tree of life as,

• Wisdom (3:18),

• The fruit of right living (11:30),

• And desired fulfillment (13:12),

Revelation talks about the tree of life as,

• The tree of life is “paradise” (Revelation 2:7,

• And existing on either side of a river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb in heaven. It has twelve different fruits, and they bear fruit each month. The fruit is for the healing of the nations.

This language is highly symbolic. Is it a physical tree with physical fruit? We can’t say for certain. What we can say is that verse 23 says Adam and Eve will be prohibited from enjoying this fruit and garden. What was wrong with them living forever? We want to live forever. Well, that would mean they would not receive the consequence God said they would have for their sin. God may not seem faithful to his Word if he didn’t do this. There may have been other reasons, like them being stuck in a state of sin and pain. We know for certain that God won’t allow them to eat from this tree in this life. But if they are in heaven, they will enjoy it. We are getting ahead of ourselves.

23

Let’s look at the next section to see what else we know. Go to verse 23: 

“Therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken” (Genesis 3:23, ESV).

God removed humanity from the garden. And then what? What did God want Adam to do? Work, work the ground from which he was made. God made Adam by picking up dust and breathing on it. And when he died, that was where he was going. He would work the ground that would now bear thorns and thistles. This judgment was a mercy in a way. God could have zapped Adam right then and there. He did not. So Adam worked.

CHERUBIM 

Who would guard the garden now? Now that Adam has relocated for work, who will take his place in Eden?

24

Flip to verse 24: 

“He [God] drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24, ESV).

Now the cherubim guard the entrance to the garden and access to this tree of eternal life. The words “guarding” and “keeping” are the same words Joe Koehler has been keen to point out to us pastors; they appear in the tabernacle and temple over the ark of the covenant. The Ark has Cherubim on it, as well as garden imagery and God’s presence. God gave his people who were hearing this story from Moses a place, a holy place, where God’s presence dwelt.

• His presence made Moses’s face glow so much that he had to wear a veil so people wouldn’t look at him.

• The ark of the covenant, carried by the priests with twelve foot poles touching the Jordan River as the people walked into the Promised Land, parted the river.

• His presence was so powerful that two men trying to brace the movement of the ark, who were not supposed to touch it, touched it and died.

• His presence was so great that when this ark was in the Philistine camp, they started getting tumors, and the women could not have babies.

• It was so supernatural that when it was placed in the temple of Dagon, the idol statue fell over. They picked it up, and the next day its head had fallen off.

God is no joke. Even the room in which his Ark of the Covenant would reside was protected by a fifteen-by-fifteen-by-fifteen-by-fifteen-foot-tall room with a four-inch-thick veil. Only once a year, a high priest would go into that room. Imagine us having a 225 sq ft room with no light, and only one person could go into it once a year. Tradition was that the priest would tie a rope around the ankle of the high priest entering in case he would die so they could drag him out. God was and is so beyond us that Adam and Eve could not be in paradise with him anymore. He would talk to them, but not in the same way. In judgment, God barred their entrance.

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5b, ESV).

Paul described God this way to Timothy, “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion” (1 Timothy 6:15b–16, ESV). God said to Moses and presumably all of us, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20b, ESV). God was, and is, so perfect that to be with him was like gazing at the blazing sun. Such radiation would reduce us to ashes. So God removed Adam and Eve from his garden and eternal life. A new distance opened between God and mankind. Have you ever felt a distance from God? I have. Have you? How do we overcome such a barrier? Is it reflective of God removing us from him like Adam and Eve? It doesn’t say he removed himself from them. They were the ones distancing themselves from God and his ways. The fact is that 2000 years ago, things between God and God and eternal life changed dramatically. Jesus came to break down this barrier to eternal life. When he died on the cross, a curtain was torn from top to bottom in the holy of holies in the Temple of God. No human could tear it in that way. It was an act of God. He ripped it apart, symbolizing that new access to God came upon the earth. The author of Hebrews in the New Testament put it this way,

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Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19–22, ESV)

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What are you to do east of Eden? We can’t get back into the garden and eat from the tree of life in this life. By faith in Jesus’s blood shed for us, we can draw near to God.

APPLICATION 

Let me ask you some questions.

1. Where is your hope? Adam turned to hope in God’s word. He trusted in God to provide Eve with offspring. Where do you put your trust?

2. Secondly, what covers your sins? Are you still trying to hide and pretend like you are not that bad? Everyone does it. God is love, so you don’t have to change. NO. We need to change. We need to obey. We need to submit. We need to follow. We need to die. Why? Because life is at stake. Because God has made a way. He re-moved us so we can be re-covered. Embrace the reality of Jesus’s death for you. He made a way where there was no way. He is the way-maker, promise-keeper, and light in our darkness. He removed us east of Eden so we could be recovered and gain access to our heavenly Father.

3. The Bible says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” We may not enjoy the Garden and the tree of life right now, sure. But we can enjoy eternal life in part now, and in full soon enough. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

PRAY

Let’s pray. 

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