What's The Good News in Genesis Three? (Supplement to Know:Truth)

In Week Two, Day Two of A Study in Divine Healing, I had the reader study Genesis chapter Three. I left you to discover the goodness of God found in this chapter. When the ladies of LifeShare met in their small groups to talk about it, it became evident that this portion of scripture needs further exploration to mine the gold, so here are my notes.

Where is the Goodness of God Revealed in Genesis Three?

Let's go back to Genesis two to explore a few essential truths.

God's original plan for mankind(Genesis 1:26-28):

King David wrote this about God's original design:

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon, and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet." Psalm 8:3-6

In Genesis 1: 26-28 (for brevity, I won't copy the scripture here), God gave Adam and Eve dominion over all the animals and everything on the earth. They were given the authority to speak and for creation to respond to their command. They were also filled with God's glory (His goodness) when God breathed His presence into them. They were made in His image.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (Gen 2:8-9, 16-17)

What was the purpose of the Two Trees placed in the garden? God told Adam and Eve that they were free to eat any tree they wished, including the Tree of Life, with the only exception being the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why?

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not bad. Everything God makes is good. The Tree was bad for man because God wanted mankind to thrive and to co-partner with Him. He wanted man to choose His love. Love is a choice. God took the risk of man choosing to reject or receive His love by putting the Tree in the Garden.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden gave man a choice to believe in God or reject Him. Its purpose after the fall was to reveal to mankind that relating to God through their own righteousness is impossible.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life was placed in the midst (Hebrew: "tavek"- middle) of the Garden. The Tree of Life represents Jesus, who is THE Tree of Life. If Adam and Eve had eaten from that tree, they would have lived forever. When we eat from the Tree of Life, we will live eternally. What is eternal life? "He has put eternity in their hearts." (Ecc 3:11). Every person desires to live eternally because God has put it there. "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:3.)

The entire world is peripheral to Jesus. We receive eternal life when we eat from THE Tree of Life. Eternal life is to know the Father and his Son. We become self-righteous whenever we go back to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's the effort to produce fruit, to produce holiness, and maintain our salvation on our effort. When we eat from the Tree of Life (Jesus), we recognize that we are in Him. His holiness is our holiness. His righteousness is our righteousness. We receive all we need when we rest in His finished work.

Genesis 3

The Deception (Gen 3:1-5):

The serpent portrayed God as stingy, and he also misquoted and perverted what God said. God had said, "of every tree of the Garden you may freely eat…" and gave them only one Tree, which was forbidden. The serpent said, "You shall not eat of every tree…". The serpent appealed to Eve's self-righteousness. Her desire to be like God apart from God. Here's the kicker…

She was already like God. She was made in God's likeness with the breath of God in her lungs. They bought into the lie that they had to do something to be who they already were.

The Fruit (Gen 3:6-11):

Eve saw that the Tree was "good for food" (Lust of the flesh), "pleasant to the eyes" (Lust of the eyes), and "desirable to make one wise" (Pride of life).

The serpent told them their eyes would be opened to being more like God, but instead, their eyes became open to their nakedness. Where the glory of God had clothed them, their eyes were now open to shame, and they sought, through their own ability, to clothe themselves with figleaves.

The Curse on Satan ( Gen 3:14-15):

Because of the fall of man, creation was cursed. Death entered where there had only been life. The serpent was cursed with eating dust and with enmity between woman in whose seed would one day bruise his head, and he would bruise His heel.

Dust (Gen 3:19): The dust satan would have to eat all his days is this: "for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." This verse is what God spoke to man. Dust is the flesh of man. The flesh always represents our human self-effort. When we try to maintain our salvation by self-effort, we are relying on our flesh. It is self-righteousness- the effort to make ourselves righteous by our good behavior or lack thereof. Satan is the accuser. His job is to accuse and make us aware of "self." He has accomplished his task when he can make us conscious of our sin, failures, and weakness.

But we have not been left defenseless. We have the shield of faith that quenches all fiery darts of condemnation. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:1)

If God does not condemn us, who does?

Head: Speaks of authority. Eve's descendant would be wounded by satan while He crushed satan's authority on the earth. "bruise His heel" is the cross. "Bruise your head" is the resurrection. Throughout history, the devil strategized to kill the seed of the woman. From Abel's death to the time of Moses, in which all firstborn males were ordered to be killed, to the time of Jesus' birth, when Herod ordered all firstborn males to be murdered, Satan unsuccessfully tried to destroy God's plan for redemption.

The Curse on Eve (Gen 3:16):

Woman lost her voice after the fall. Once she co-partnered with Adam. But after the fall, Eve's voice was never heard again. She was cursed with pain in childbirth, and part of the curse was that she would have the desire to rule over her husband, but he would rule over her instead. The tension between men and women began here in the garden.

"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us for it is written, 'cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'" (Galatians 3:13)

Take a good look at that verse again. Christ became a curse to set us free from the curse. Jesus restored the dignity and value of women and restored her voice. What is so beautiful about Jesus as he relates to women is how he almost went out of his way to show women their worth. It was a woman to whom Jesus revealed Himself first at a Well and who became the first evangelist. It was a woman to whom He stopped for first after the resurrection. It was a woman who sat at his feet to learn (women weren't considered worthy of being scholars). 

Think about what the verse in Galatians means regarding pain in childbirth. Is it possible to live a supernatural life of peace and live pain-free? I believe it is. 

One more thought. It is a great travesty that women have sought, by their power, to have a voice apart from resting in the finished work of Christ. While men have wrongly suppressed women, we have seen the destruction that movements such as feminism have done to our world. I want to focus on this topic in the following post. I believe it is needed within the church for women to wisely use their voice to help reverse the curse in the garden and give a picture of how this can look in homes and across churches to adorn the Gospel.

The Curse on Adam (Gen 3:17-19):

Eden was where pleasure abounded. There was no work, no hardship, only peace and joy. (Eden means "pleasure").

After Adam sinned, the ground became cursed, and all the pleasure turned into toil and hardship. The ground was hard to till; sweat poured from his face, and he worked to tame it. The sweat on his brow speaks of a life of stress, anxiety, depression, and a hard life- human effort.

When Jesus was at the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before He was arrested, scripture says He sweated blood. His blood was shed to redeem Adam's curse. The separation from His Father that he would have to endure because of our sin caused such extreme pressure and agony. And yet, "For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross." (Hebrews 12:2)

 Jesus endured the agony of separation from His Father because of the joy of setting us free from the curse of sin and death and restoring us to a relationship with God. Jesus took the toil, our human effort, our anxiety, and depression when He wore the crown of thorns. He redeemed us, so we no longer have to endure the pain that self-effort provides.

How can we live in such freedom? By receiving His sacrifice by faith. We take it as ours because it is our inheritance through our union with Christ.

First Shedding of Blood (Gen 3:20-21):

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." (Hebrews 9:22)

Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves when they sinned. This also speaks of self-righteousness. They were unable to cover their shame through their self-effort. God, instead, clothed them with the skins of animals. How did He get those skins? The blood of an animal had to be shed to do so. Innocent blood was shed for the guilty. This was a foreshadowing of Jesus' sacrifice. 

Cherubim (Gen 3:22-24):

Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, and Cherubim were placed to guard the entrance. Remember, the Tree of Life was in the garden; if they had eaten from it, they would have lived forever. Therefore, it was God's mercy that He banished them because if they ate of the Tree of Life in their sinful state, they would have remained in that sinful state forever. As it is, Adam is never mentioned positively again except as an example of the fallen state of mankind. Interestingly, he is not even mentioned in the Hall of Faith (Heb 11).

The book of John is a picture of Jesus coming out from the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), going out to gather His sheep and bring them into the presence of the Father. It is a picture of the Mosaic Temple. Where once, we could only approach God through a mediator and with the yearly sacrifice for sin, even so, only the High Priest could come into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. Jesus, through His torn flesh, became the veil, torn to give us access to the very presence of God. No longer do the Cherubim stand guard to keep us out; Jesus came out to bring us in! He restored Eden to us by His sacrifice. Jesus restored our value. He restored access to the Throneroom of Grace. Hallelujah!