While we don’t think of the fall very often, it changed
everything for our world and for our lives. There is a direct connection between
every sin we struggle with and every heartache we experience with the fall,
when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.
With the fall, what God had declared to be “good” and “very
good” became bad and very bad. It is hard to comprehend the terrible
consequences of that act of disobedience for in an instant everything changed.
Immediately Adam and Eve lost the innocence of righteousness and realized they
were naked and ashamed. Then when God came to commune with them as He did in
the garden they hid from Him.
For the first time, they understood and felt guilt. For the
first time they were afraid of God. For the first time they experienced
relational disconnect as Adam blamed Eve. For the first time they blamed others
for their sin: Eve, Satan and Adam, Eve. It was an awful, terrible, cataclysmic
day of firsts that has dogged every one of our footsteps down to the present
day. No longer would God walk with them in the garden. No longer could they
even remain in the garden. For the first time, hardships would enter their
lives and they and their offspring would suffer all of the effects of sin:
Relational brokenness with God, with one another, disease, death, sorrow, pain,
murder, war, bondage, addictions, and all the brokenness that we have
experienced firsthand.
Of all the consequences of the image being broken the one
most cataclysmic in its implications was the separation of the created with the
creator. From friends with God we
became enemies of God. Our sin made
us objects of His wrath for sin cannot co-exist with absolute righteous
holiness.
From people destined for eternity with Him we now became people
destined for eternity without him as well as physical decay and death. Righteous hearts turned dark. Communion with God became
distant where it existed at all. A friendly world turned unfriendly and
uncooperative. It was a tsunami shift in every way.
Every heartache we have suffered, every fear, every setback,
every funeral we have attended, every sadness we feel, depression we suffer
from, sin we struggle with, physical ailment we deal with, emotions we struggle
with – it all goes back to the fall. It was in every
way a very far fall, a fall so far that it is impossible to adequately describe
its impact. It was an eternal fall as people destined for life with God became
absolutely separated from God. It was a massive fall as hearts that once embraced
God now rejected Him. It was a fearful fall as people who once treated one
another with love now used people for their own purposes. A perfect image
became a ruined facsimile of its original form.
Yet, God in His love and grace left a residue of His image
even in the fall. This includes a knowledge in the hearts of men and women that
there is more to life than mere physical existence and a desire to understand
what that is. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has also set eternity in
the human heart; yet on one can fathom what God has done from beginning to
end.” Think about that: eternity set in our hearts so that we would look for
eternal significance. Yet it is still frustrating because “no one can fathom
what God has done from beginning to end.”
Paul makes a similar point in Romans 1:18-20, that God has
indeed made himself known to mankind. “The wrath of God is being revealed from
heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the
truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal
power and divine nature – have been clearly seen being understood from what has
been made, so that people are without excuse.”
The very magnificence of
creation in all of its forms from the galaxies in the skies to the beauty of
the depths of the seas clearly demonstrates that there is an eternal hand
behind all of creation.
Furthermore, God left in the human heart the capacity,
through our choice, and God’s call to respond to Him and to enter into new life
with Him. In fact, His intention to come and rescue a world gone terribly wrong
was announced at the very time that he pronounced judgment on Satan and Adam
and Eve at the fall.
“So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done
this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl
on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will
crush your head and you will strike his heel.”
It seems that serpents were forever destined to crawl on the
ground as they became a symbol of Satan who had appeared to Eve in the form of
a snake. But more important is what God says about the relationship between
Satan and the woman and her offspring. There will be enmity
between Satan and Eve which is understandable given his part in this terrible
event. Eve would never forget the awful event that Satan had enticed her to
participate in.
But then God says something more interesting. He will put
enmity between Satan’s offspring and hers. But the apex of this verse is the last phrase, “he will
crush your head and you will strike his heal.”
Here God introduces
a single male offspring who will eventually come and who will crush the head of
Satan once and for all even as Satan strikes his heel. This is the first
reference in Scripture to the One who would one day come and defeat Satan. Even
on this terrible day that changed all of history, there would be another day
that would also change history, the day that a Savior would come and defeat the
evil one.
Think about this. From that day forward, Satan knew that he would be defeated by an unknown male offspring of Eve. He lived in
eternal fear of who that would be and when that day would come. It is clear he
recognized Jesus for who He was when He ministered on earth, which is why Satan
tried to entice Him to follow Him in the desert temptations immediately after
Jesus’ baptism by John. And, on Good Friday he was ecstatic that God’s Son was
crucified! He had won! He had defeated the one who came to defeat him. Little
did he count on Resurrection Sunday and on that day he knew he had met his
waterloo. He had lost. God had won and all he could do from that day forward
was to fight a losing rearguard battle.
All of history from the awful day of the fall has been a
story of redemption as God, out of amazing love for rebellious people put in
place His divine rescue operation that would climax with the ministry, death
and resurrection of Jesus and culminate in a New Heavens and New Earth where
God and His redeemed will live for all time.
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