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Passage covered: Genesis 3:20 – 4:8 (picking up at Genesis 4:9 next time)

Summary

Back from a short break and picking up in Genesis 3:20 through 4:8. God makes coats of skin for Adam and Eve, the first sacrifice for sin and an early picture of the cross. Plus: the “us” of Genesis 3:22 and the Trinity, why God closed off the Tree of Life, and how He gives chance after chance. Then Cain and Abel’s offerings: giving God our best, why the heart matters more than the checkbook, and God’s warning that “sin is crouching at the door — you must master it.”

Briefly recapping the Fall and the curse in Genesis 3: even in judgment, God shows Himself as a good Father. He promises a Redeemer who will crush the serpent’s head, and the thorns from the curse show up again in the crown Jesus wore on the cross. Adam names his wife Eve, “the mother of all living,” which leads into the miracle of life from conception, along with some family news about new babies and grandbabies on the way.

In Genesis 3:21, God clothes Adam and Eve in garments of skin. An animal had to die to cover their sin. That “crimson thread” runs from Eden through the Old Testament sacrifices to the Lamb of God, and it’s a big part of why communion matters: it reminds us what that covering cost.

God’s words in Genesis 3:22, “the man has become as one of us,” open up the Trinity: one God in three Persons, seen clearly at Jesus’ baptism. That turns into a candid side conversation about ordination councils, the limits of explaining God, and why believers should spend less time arguing Calvinism and Arminianism on social media and more time loving people. God is sovereign, and we are responsible for our choices.

Cherubim and a flaming sword bar the way to the Tree of Life, and that was mercy. God would not leave humanity locked into a sinful, decaying existence forever, and sanctification and glorification are His plan to bring us out of it. A little speculation follows: did the Garden last until the Flood, does the Tree of Life explain the long lifespans before the Flood, and what about its return in Revelation 22? In the end, Jesus is our true Tree of Life. There’s also a fun side trip into ancient Hebrew, the names of God, and how complicated the English language is.

In Genesis 4, Abel brings the firstlings and the fat portions of his flock, and Cain brings an offering “of the fruit of the ground.” God accepts Abel’s offering and not Cain’s. That opens an honest talk about tithing and giving, including a personal story about giving a “Cain offering” early in marriage and how faithfully God has provided since. A word of caution, too: don’t feel pressured into giving. Pray about it, and remember that God wants obedience and a cheerful heart, not just money. That includes our time, which many of us guard more tightly than our wallets. And the tithe goes back before the Law, to Abraham and Melchizedek.

Cain gets angry because he “did his duty” and expected God to owe him for it. God lovingly confronts him: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? … sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Even before the Law, God was teaching His children and giving them a way to choose rightly. Cain ignores the warning and kills his brother. Closing with Psalm 145:8–9: the Lord is gracious, merciful, and slow to anger, and He calls us to show those same traits.

Next episode: Genesis 4:9, as God comes to Cain with a question He already knows the answer to.

Scripture References

Main Passage

• Genesis 3:20 — Adam names his wife Eve, “the mother of all living”
• Genesis 3:21 — The Lord God makes garments of skin for Adam and Eve
• Genesis 3:22 — “The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil”
• Genesis 3:23 — Sent forth from Eden to till the ground
• Genesis 3:24 — Cherubim and a flaming sword guard the way to the Tree of Life
• Genesis 4:1–2 — Birth of Cain and Abel; a tiller of the ground and a keeper of sheep
• Genesis 4:3–5 — The offerings of Cain and Abel
• Genesis 4:6–7 — “Sin lies at the door… you must rule over it”
• Genesis 4:8 — Cain kills Abel

Recap & Background

• Genesis 1–2 — Creation and the Garden
• Genesis 1:26 — “Let us make man in our image”
• Genesis 2:16–17 — The one command about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
• Genesis 3:1–13 — The serpent’s temptation and the Fall
• Genesis 3:15 — The promise that the Seed will crush the serpent’s head
• Genesis 3:17–19 — Thorns and thistles; “dust you are, and to dust you shall return”

Cross References

• Matthew 27:29 / John 19:2 — The crown of thorns
• Leviticus 17:11 — “The life of the flesh is in the blood”
• Hebrews 9:22 — Without the shedding of blood there is no remission
• John 1:29 — The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
• 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 — The Lord’s Supper / communion
• Matthew 3:16–17 — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism
• Deuteronomy 6:4 — “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (echad)
• John 14:9 — “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”
• Colossians 2:9 / Hebrews 1:3 — The fullness of the Godhead in Christ; the exact representation of God
• Romans 9:17–18 / Exodus 9:12 — God hardening Pharaoh’s heart
• Acts 17:26 — God set “the bounds of their habitation”
• Romans 8:29–30 — Predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son; justified and glorified
• Revelation 22:1–2 — The river of life and the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations
• John 4:10–14 — Jesus, the living water
• 1 Samuel 16:11 — David the shepherd
• John 10:11 / Hebrews 13:20 — Jesus the Good Shepherd, the Great Shepherd
• Exodus 3:13–15 — God reveals His name at the burning bush
• Genesis 11:1–9 — Babel and the confusion of languages
• Matthew 22:21 — “Render unto Caesar”
• 2 Corinthians 9:7 — God loves a cheerful giver, not one who gives grudgingly
• Malachi 3:10 — “Prove Me now herewith”
• Mark 12:41–44 / Luke 21:1–4 — The widow’s offering
• Genesis 14:18–20 / Hebrews 7:1–10 — Abraham’s tithe to Melchizedek, before the Law
• Revelation 3:1–6 — The church at Sardis: works without heart
• John 14:15 / Matthew 22:37–39 — Loving God by obeying Him and loving our neighbor
• Psalm 145:8–9 — “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger”
• 1 Timothy 3:1–13 — Qualifications for pastors and deacons (slow to anger, not a brawler, patient)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:26:19 — 199.5MB)

Episode 94: Genesis 3:1–19, “Did God Really Say?”

We’re back in Genesis 3 for the Fall. The serpent opens with the same question the world still asks Christians: “Did God really say?” We go through Eve adding to God’s command, Satan’s lie that “you will be like God,” and Adam standing right there and saying nothing. Then come the hiding, the blame-shifting, and God’s curses on the serpent, the woman, Adam and the ground. Through all of it God gives the first promise of a Savior (Genesis 3:15), the Seed who will crush the serpent’s head. We also cover why every part of the Bible is God’s Word, not just the red letters, how to test what you read against Scripture, and why sin is a twisting of what God made good.

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Full Summary

Recap: where Genesis 3 begins

Genesis 1–2 describe creation. Genesis 2 zooms in on Adam and on Eve, who was made from Adam’s rib to be his helper and companion. Genesis 3 opens with the serpent, “more subtil than any beast of the field,” asking the woman, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1).

That question should sound familiar to Christians today. “Did God really say?” and “Is that really what it meant?” are still the openings used to raise doubt about Scripture, whether through “that was just the culture back then” or by twisting the Greek and Hebrew. Our answer is that God doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8) and that not one jot or tittle of His Word will pass away (Matthew 5:18).

Adding to God’s Word (Genesis 3:2–3)

Eve leaves out the word freely and adds “neither shall ye touch it,” which God never said. We compare this to the Pharisees, who built layers of oral tradition around the Law of Moses. Jesus called those layers the “traditions of men” (Mark 7:8–13; Matthew 15:1–9), and they kept people out of the Kingdom (Matthew 23:13). Churches can do the same thing when they set up man-made “guardrails” and treat them as tests of salvation or of spiritual maturity. The gospel is Jesus plus nothing.

Some related points from the conversation:

• The church is the people, not the building. Each believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and God inhabits the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3). A spilled drink or a crayon mark on the wall is a sign the church is alive.
• Manufactured worship. Some worship bands are trained to engineer a feeling of God’s presence with build-ups, lights and smoke. If you have to make people feel that God is there, something has already gone wrong.
• “That doctrine is only 150 years old.” One example is the claim that the rapture was invented by John Nelson Darby. The teaching comes from 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17. We have manuscript evidence for Scripture reaching back nearly 2,000 years.
• The “red letters only” error. All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21). That includes Paul and Peter, and also the Gospel writers who recorded the red letters, as the Holy Spirit brought things to their remembrance (John 14:26).

Know your Bible

We encourage young people to study Scripture for themselves and to “show thyself approved unto God… rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). The memorization programs many of us grew up with (AWANA, RAs and GAs) hid God’s Word in our hearts in a way that lasts (Psalm 119:11). Good teachers like Charles Stanley, Adrian Rogers and J. Vernon McGee can point you in the right direction. With any book about the Bible, check the passages it cites, read the surrounding context, and see whether they actually say what the author claims.

“Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4–5)

Satan contradicts God directly. We talk about how much Satan knew. He knew God does not lie, and he seems to have known a Redeemer would come, which is why he has been chasing the promised Seed through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Israel, and why he still hates the Jewish people today. We also suggest jealousy as a motive: God formed humans with His own hands and made them in His image.

Satan and his angels are not all-knowing. Their view of the future is limited. We use the slave girl with a spirit of divination in Acts 16:16–18 to show this. Her fortune-telling was a moneymaker with short-range predictions, and it ended when Paul cast the spirit out. Modern psychics are the same kind of thing, and missionaries still tell of people coming out of the occult and leaving those “abilities” behind.

The temptation itself is “ye shall be as gods,” with the hint that God is holding something back. We point out that the same lie, that a person can become a god, shows up in some modern religions. Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). He comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10), and he seeks whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).

The fall (Genesis 3:6)

Eve reasons her way into sin: the fruit is good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and able to make her wise. Each of those desires was given by God, and Satan twisted them. We connect this to a line the hosts attribute to C.S. Lewis: sin is not the opposite of holiness but a perversion of what is holy. Today the same thing happens with God’s design for intimacy within marriage.

Adam was “with her.” He heard the whole conversation, said nothing, and ate. He had dominion over every creature (Genesis 1:28) and the intelligence to name every animal (Genesis 2:19–20), yet he didn’t stop it. Men are called to step up and say “no” when their families are being tempted. Paul calls Jesus the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Jesus did only what the Father told Him (John 5:19; Luke 22:42) and showed what Adam should have done.

Eyes opened, hiding, and blame (Genesis 3:7–13)

• Fig leaves (v. 7): Their innocence is gone, and right away they try to cover their own sin. It’s the opposite of being born again: in place of freedom from guilt, guilt rushes in.
• Hiding (v. 8): They hide from God “among the trees,” like a toddler covering their eyes and thinking no one can see them. We note the Tree of Life Version (TLV) rendering, “Adonai Elohim,” and explain why Jewish tradition uses it in place of the divine name.
• “Where art thou?” (v. 9): God already knew. He gave Adam the chance to come out and confess.
• Fear (v. 10): For the first time, Adam is afraid. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), and fear was not part of the world as God made it.
• Blame (vv. 12–13): Adam blames “the woman whom thou gavest to be with me,” which blames God too. Eve blames the serpent (“beguiled,” which in the Hebrew means to lead astray or seduce). Sin makes you foolish in a hurry. Satan didn’t trick them about which fruit it was. They chose with their eyes fully open, which gave the Accuser what he wanted.

The curses and the first gospel (Genesis 3:14–19)

• The serpent (vv. 14–15): It is cursed above all cattle and every beast and sentenced to crawl on its belly. Then comes the protoevangelium, the first promise of the gospel: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The cross was only a “bruise to the heel” for Jesus. His death was temporary, while Satan’s defeat is final.
• The woman (v. 16): Pain in childbirth is greatly multiplied, and “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” We discuss godly, loving, protective spiritual leadership in marriage, not tyranny. Marriage is meant as a partnership (Ephesians 5). We also talk about how today’s culture fights against that design.
• Adam and the ground (vv. 17–19): The ground is cursed. Work becomes painful toil among thorns and thistles, and physical death is announced: “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” All of creation is affected (Romans 8:22), and animals likely began to fear man from this point. The thorns from this curse later became the crown pressed on Jesus’ head (Matthew 27:29). He literally wore the curse.
• Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5). He saw generations of his descendants, and their sin, starting with one of his sons murdering the other (Genesis 4).

Looking ahead

Next time we pick up at Genesis 3:20, where Adam names Eve. Then we move into Genesis 4 and the first fight in human history, Cain and Abel.

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Scripture References

Genesis 1–2; Genesis 3:1–19; Genesis 1:28; Genesis 2:19–20; Genesis 4; Genesis 5:5 · Psalm 22:3; Psalm 119:11 · Matthew 5:18; Matthew 15:1–9; Matthew 23:13; Matthew 27:29 · Mark 7:8–13 · Luke 22:42 · John 5:19; John 8:44; John 10:10; John 14:26 · Acts 16:16–18 · Romans 8:22 · 1 Corinthians 6:19; 1 Corinthians 15:45, 51–52 · Ephesians 5 · 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 · 2 Timothy 2:15; 2 Timothy 3:16 · Hebrews 13:8 · 1 Peter 5:8 · 2 Peter 1:20–21 · 1 John 4:18

Other References

• Tree of Life Version (TLV): a Messianic Jewish Bible translation
• Teachers mentioned: Charles Stanley, Adrian Rogers, J. Vernon McGee
• C.S. Lewis: idea attributed to him that sin is the perversion of what is holy
• John Nelson Darby: often wrongly credited with inventing the rapture doctrine

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Episode 93: Genesis 2–3, from the First Command to the Serpent

We start by looking back on two incredible Sundays in a row. Brother Jake did his first baptisms (five of them), the altar stayed full song after song, and our youth came down without hesitating to pray with visitors. We also talk about a youth solo that knocked it out of the park, a packed choir, and the joy of seeing our young people get up and join Greg for his favorite Bible school song.

Then we go back to Genesis 2:

• The first command (vv. 16–17): God was generous. Eat freely from every tree except one. Adam’s “death” that day began as spiritual separation from God, and it points ahead to the cross.
• “It is not good that man should be alone” (vv. 18–20): Adam names the animals, but none of them is a suitable helper. We talk about why we were made for relationship, in marriage and in the church family.
• The creation of Eve (vv. 21–25): She was taken from Adam’s side to be by his side. We cover the two becoming one flesh, how that pictures Christ and the Church, why all of humanity comes from Adam, God’s created order, and the innocence of “naked and not ashamed.”

We finish by starting Genesis 3:1–3. The serpent asks “Has God really said?”, which is a tactic Satan still uses today. Eve adds “neither shall you touch it” to God’s command, and we talk about how adding to God’s Word leads to legalism, like the Pharisees. The fruit was never the point. Obedience and love were. We close on pride as the sin that brought Satan down, and on the humility of Christ, who left His glory to die for us.

Next time: We pick back up in Genesis chapter 3, around verses 4 and 5, and get into the heart of the Fall.

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On this episode we continue discussing the Book of Genesis chapter 2.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:19 — 197.2MB)

We continue our discussion of the book of Genesis Chapter 1 following the days of creation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:51 — 216.7MB)

On this episode we begin our discussion of the Book of Genesis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23:29 — 193.0MB)

On this episode we wrap up our discussion of the Book of Revelation. Join us next week as we begin our discussion of the Book of Genesis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:13:58 — 171.3MB)

Join us as we wrap up Revelation Chapter 21.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:32 — 168.0MB)

Join us as we continue the Book of Revelation with Chapter 21.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:15:46 — 175.4MB)

Hope everyone has enjoyed this Memorial Day. On this episode we discuss Revelation Chapter 20.

We did not do a Livestream tonight so the next episode will post in 2 weeks.