Main idea: Trust God for grace as we live in a painful, sin-cursed world.
How to endure pain (from Chris Tornquist)
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Good morning, faith, Bible Church, good to see all of you. Hope that you've had a good a good week being thankful and spending time with people you love. Hopefully it's great to be here. My name is Nathan. I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm really thankful that I get to preach God's word this morning. Those of you who heard Dan preach last week from Genesis three, you heard him talk about the fact that God not only comes to confront Adam and Eve, but also to restore them. He wants to bring them back. And we're going to see in this passage today that God's purpose in all the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin is to point them to a bigger problem, that God wants to be reconciled to them. They're enemies of God, and they need to be brought back to him. So let's look at Genesis, three verses, 14 to 24 so please stand with me if you're able, and we're going to read these verses together. Genesis 314, through 24 verse 14. And as Dan said last week, we know this is a pre Incarnate Christ talking to Adam and Eve here he walked in the garden with them. So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field? On your belly, you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel to the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and child bearing in pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam, he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles. It shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. 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, and knowing good and evil, now, lest he reach out his hand and take 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. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together our God. We thank you that you do not just judge and condemn our sin as we rightly deserve, but you also confront us and give us discipline and pain so that we might be pointed to a greater need for restoration to You, thank You that You are a God who wants to be reconciled to those who are your enemies. Thank you God for providing a way for the head of that serpent to be crushed, for providing a way for Adam and Eve and all of us to be clothed, to have our sins forgiven, to be made right with you through your Son, the Lord Jesus. Thank you Jesus for being the perfect sacrifice who takes away our sins, who makes us right with God, who restores us. Help us to see your purpose and pain. Help us to see the comfort, the solace that you give in the midst of the pain. Help us to see the hope in the future of your grace that you will give one day as you deliver us and make all things new through Christ. Gotta pray for those right now who are going through intense pain, whether that be in a spiritual sense or a relational or physical sense. Help them to know that you understand, that you know that you care, and that you in the midst of that. Want them to draw near to you to find solace, to find strength. Please help all of us to trust you, to trust your grace, that you still give life, you still give food, and ultimately, you give forgiveness through the Lord Jesus. We thank you for that help us to trust in you. We pray for our brothers and sisters around the city that they would trust in you. I pray for churches to the North Lake, Peaceful Valley, church up in Riverside that you would strengthen mark and Josh and others there as they teach your word. Help the brothers and sisters gather there to be faithful. Be faithful. Pray for peace. Princeton Avenue, church and Aaron badly and other brothers and sisters there that you would strengthen them to worship you faithfully today, to reach out to those around them in their neighborhood, to to make to be a light for you in the darkness there, we pray for our our dear brothers and sisters that we sent out who are far from us, right? For Frank and Jacqueline in Papua, New Guinea, that you'd help them provide for them a generator that works, that's able to start when they need it, help them with caring for their kids and their different health needs. Thank you for healing Toby's year, and we pray for strength for them as they learn language and desire to be faithful to you there and seeing the gospel. Go out to those unreached people groups and finish their mountains. We pray for the Josiah and Taylor and their kids as they're down south of us, studying, preparing for the same kind of work of reaching those who are not reached. Help them father. Give them strength. Help them as they're learning how to learn language. Help them as they're seeking to faithfully parent their kids and love them. And we thank You for Your Mercy. To all of us. Please speak to us now, by your word, by your Spirit, amen, may be seated. None of us like pain. Friend of mine sitting up on the second row there, he said, pain hurts, right? We don't enjoy pain, but it has a good purpose, right? Like if I'm if I'm touching a fire and I start to feel pain. What does the pain make me do? I pull my hand back. If that pain weren't there, I might think that putting my hand in the fire was a great idea, and then my hand would be very damaged, right? Or if you're touching a saw blade, and all of a sudden you feel that pain, you pull back before your finger gets removed from your body. Pain is a good thing, and that it points us to a bigger problem that needs to be solved. In January of 2015 I started feeling some abdominal pain, and it wasn't something I'd eaten. My doctor thought maybe it was a kidney stone, and I went to the doctors, and they found that I had cancer going all through my abdomen. Thankfully, by God's grace, through medicine and chemotherapy, God healed me. I'm fine, but if that had been for that pain, I would have kept on going like you could have tried to take the pain away, but if you didn't take the cancer away, would that have been loving? They tried to take the pain away, and it didn't work. They had to get the cancer out, because the pain was not going to stop. But pain is a gift, because it shows us a bigger problem when you hear the smoke alarm going off, and it's not because you were cooking bacon and it made a little bit of smoke, but it's actually a fire it's a blessing. You want that smoke alarm to tell you there's a problem. Get out of the house, get the fire extinguisher, call the fire department when the check engine light comes on, and you're not driving a really old car that just has check engine light, because there's some motive sensor that nobody cares about that's going off. It's actually a problem. You it's good, because then you realize I got to deal with that. It's a problem, right? This situation in Genesis three, the pain that God assigns Adam and Eve should be an alarm,
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right? Telling us there's a problem. Don't ignore it. It's not okay. And what's the problem that Adam and Eve are facing? They have died spiritually. They're separated from God. They haven't physically fallen over yet they will, but they're separated from God. They're removed from from being able to be in fellowship with God as his sons and daughters, and that is a problem, and God does not want them to continue on living in that state of being separated from him and definitely not realize they have a problem that needs to be addressed. And so He gives them pain. He gives them a gift to point them to the bigger problem. I want to encourage you this morning. In the midst of the pain which does hurt, God gives grace. He wants to give you grace through the Lord Jesus, so that you can know Him. You can be drawn near to him. You can be brought back to him. In the biggest problem that any of us face, being separated from God, being his enemies, can be addressed through Christ. Listen to Hebrews 12, verse nine, second half through verse 11. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live for they, our earthly fathers and mothers disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them. But God, our heavenly Father, 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. The pain of discipline is not fun in the moment, but it's good for us when it's coming from our loving God. We see in Genesis three, there's a massive problem that humanity have. We've rebelled against God, and that's produced consequences that enable us to not forget we have a bigger problem. We need to be continually reminded that our biggest need is to draw near to God, to look to Him, to be in relationship with Him. And so I want you to see God's grace in the midst of a fallen world. In this passage, God gives grace pointing us to him, to the greatest thing we can have. So look at Genesis three, verse 14, and we see here the Lord Jesus addressing the serpent. We see that in the midst of conflict and hostility, we can trust in the one who crushes the head of the serpent. In the midst of conflict and hostility, you can trust in the one who crushes the head of the serpent. Look at verse 14 there. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, remember, he tempted Eve to rebel. Cursed are you above all this, all livestock and above all the beasts of the field on your belly, you shall go and dust, you shall eat all the days of your life. Here we see Jesus judge. Using the serpent right? And we see in John 522, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. The father rightly judges right, but he gives that judgment to the Son to make Jesus is here judging the serpent, condemning, cursing the serpent, right? And we see, what do we see about God here? He's a God who speaks. He comes to his people and speaks to them. He speaks and he speaks today, in His Word, by His Spirit to us. He wants us to know him so he speaks to us, telling us what's true, telling us what our problem is, telling us where to go. He's not only a God who speaks, he's a God who judges, he rules. He's on his throne. Adam and Eve eating that fruit did not knock God off his throne. God is not all of a sudden, like, really? Like, what do I do now? What's gonna happen? God knows God is sovereign. He's wise, and he is moving through this situation without him and Eve according to His perfect plan, ruling and reigning as he always does. And so he says to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed. A curse is a decree of doom. Nobody wants to have a curse on them. It's usually a bad thing to be cursed, and normally it's in a covenant context. We see in Genesis, 12, one through three, God promises to Abram he's going to bless those who bless him and curse those who curse. In that covenant context. In Deuteronomy, 27 and 28 we see a list of blessings and curses that go along with a covenant God's coming with his people. So God is cursing the serpent, and he doesn't curse Adam and Eve, though. Notice that he curses the serpent in verse 14, then he curses the ground in verse 17, but he doesn't curse Adam and Eve. They deserve to be cursed for their sin, right? But God doesn't curse them. Who does God curse? If you look at Galatians three, it says curses is anyone who hangs on a tree, right? Jesus took the curse for Adam and Eve for us so that we could be restored to God. Look at what Jesus says to the serpent. Here, he uses some poetry, right? Like when we make a poem, you might say, like, Roses are red, violets are blue. I like Turkey, so do you or something like that. You know, we rhyme sounds Hebrew poetry, which you find most often in the Psalms, but it's also in all kinds of other books throughout the Old Testament. You testament, rhymes ideas. Instead of rhyming the same sound, they rhyme the same idea. So here we see in the first part of verse 14, Cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field? So God repeats that they are emphasizing he's cursed. The serpent is cursed. And it's ironic because he says you're cursed above all the all the livestock and the beasts of the field. How is he cursed above them? On his belly, he's gonna go and dust. He will eat. See again, the brimming again. He rhymes ideas there in the second part of verse 14, on your belly, you shall go and dust, you shall eat. God humbles the prideful one. God opposes the proud right the serpent Satan is wanting to rebel against God. You want to say, I'm going to take your place God. I want glory like you get. He wants Adam and Eve to join him in his rebellion against God, in kicking God out of the center place and becoming his own God. And what does God say? No, you will be humiliated, subjugated, defeated. What does it mean to eat dust? Right? Like you might tell somebody to eat my dust. You're racing. It doesn't literally mean Eat my dust, right? It means like, I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna be victorious in this conquest, in this race room that we're having together. God is guaranteeing to the serpent you will be defeated. And then we see in the next verse how that's gonna happen, right? God humbles the proud, and he lifts up the humble. We see that that is the God we serve. So in verse 15, we see again, this repetition. And now, instead of just repeating the same idea, he's developing the idea further. So he says, in verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. So God's promising, there's going to be a conflict between Eve and the serpent, and between Eve's offspring and the serpent's offspring. There's going to be a conflict the serpent's not going to be victorious. He's not going to get all of humanity to follow him and his rebellion and just and to say, Nana, Nana to God and just rebellions God. He's not going to get that to happen. There will always be humans resisting what he's doing. And there's not all of them. Many humans have gone along with Satan, with the serpent, but there always will be a faithful remnant who are resisting, who are opposing him. And the ultimate one, right, is the ultimate offspring of Eve Jesus, who opposes the serpent and destroys him. Right? Look at what's going to happen between the offspring of the serpent and the woman. And verse 15, he shall bruise your head. Literally, strike at your head. So if someone strikes at your head with a really strong blow, that's that's not going to be good for you. Striking at your heel is going to hurt, but it's not going to kill you, usually, right? So God is promising the serpent will be struck in his head. He will be destroyed. This is the first gospel. This is the first the proto Ian gillion, recall, it's the first time the gospel is proclaimed. God is promising he is going to destroy the serpent. And imagine this is Jesus in the garden talking to Adam and Eve. He is telling the serpent, I will strike at your head. Jesus is giving notice to the serpent. He is coming for him. So what does the serpent do? We see in Revelation 12? I'm not going to read it, but you can see the conflict. Revelation 12 describes the serpent as a dragon. Imagine the great dragon, and then there's this woman who's pregnant. I've never been pregnant and never it will be. I'm a man, but some of you women have been pregnant before, and you know that when you're pregnant and you're about to give birth, you're vulnerable. Like, have you ever seen a woman who's about to give birth get up and do a Jackie Chan kickboxing routine? No, they're not gonna be able to defend themselves very well. They're vulnerable. This dragon is about to devour the child that comes out of this woman, the woman in Revelation 12, is representing God's people, Israel, the offspring of Eve, those who have come from Eve, who are bringing the Savior, the Messiah. And you see it every step of the way. Cain, killing Abel, the wickedness of the time of Noah, Abram, and Abram and Sarah not being able to have kids, and then all the things that happen with them. And all throughout the story, you see this drama unfolding. How is the righteous offspring gonna come? How is this offspring of Eve who's gonna crush the Serpent? How is he gonna get here at every step of the way the dragon is seeking to destroy, to destroy. And the ultimate example that we see is in Matthew two, when Jesus is born and the Magi come to worship him. In Herod, the evil king goes and sends to kill every child under the age of two, the dragon seeking to devour the offspring of the woman. But God warns Joseph in a dream, and he flees to Egypt. God delivers him and throughout all Jesus' life, even in Jesus's suffering, His death, His resurrection, His ascension to Heaven, we see in Revelation 12, God brings him up to heaven, to the throne. God delivers Jesus and uses Jesus. Jesus conquers Satan. He crushes the serpent. He destroys him. How does he do this revelation? 12 talks about Jesus through his faithful ones, through their testimony, they defeat the serpent. They live out this victory that Christ has accomplished. Listen to Romans. 1620, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, be with you. God is destroying Satan has destroyed him, and is destroying him through God's people, through our testimony, when we point to the Lord Jesus and say, Look what he did. That is how he went. That's the victory. The victory is Christ. Christ has crushed the serpent. What does First John three, verse eight say, Jesus came to the Son of Man, came to destroy the works of the of the devil. He has come to destroy satan.
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And so what does that mean for us? There's going to be conflict, right? There's going to be lots of conflict. There's the opposition people who follow Jesus, like he said, If you want to follow me and come after me, you have to take up your cross, deny yourself and follow me that taking up your cross wasn't like a metaphor like, Oh, you're gonna have a hard time with some relationships or a backache, or whatever it's you're gonna have to be willing to be killed like I was. Jesus was killed on a cross. 11 of his 12 disciples were killed. As far as we understand for their faith. Many Christians throughout time have had to die in this conflict with this with the serpent, and yet, even in their death, they are victorious, because Christ is victorious, and their death is not the end. Their death points to the greater death, which was Jesus's death, where Satan was defeated, and points to the victory that Jesus has accomplished every time someone is willing to die, to suffer, to endure pain, because of Christ, it's pointing to this greater reality that the offspring of the woman Jesus has crushed the serpent, he has been victorious and is victorious. Listen to First Corinthians 15 verse 24 read along if you want to First Corinthians 15 receive Jesus' victory over all the enemies of God, first, Corinthians, 15, verse 24 then comes the end, when he Jesus delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under His feet, all things in subjection under Jesus' feet. Jesus has destroyed the works of the serpent, the lies, the rebellion that the serpent is leading. Jesus has destroyed it. And now if you're in Christ, you have the victory of Christ. You don't have to give in to the temptations of the serpent. You can resist the lies of the enemy. You can stand firm in Christ. You don't have to believe the lives that that the world tells us that our flesh tells us that Satan tells us Jesus crushes the power of sin in us, right? He's working in us so we're joined with him in his death. So when you're tempted to sin, you don't have to, because Christ has been victorious over your sin in His death on the cross, he has freed us from being slaves to sin, by his death, by his crushing of the serpent's head, he has made it possible for us all to walk in His victory, to be obedient to God, the Father. But we should not expect to be popular, right? As we go through this world, where we should expect conflict and difficulty, because the serpent, the dragon, Satan, is still trying. To oppose. He's still trying to afflict God's people. We can trust that Christ has defeated him with his death on the cross, with his victorious resurrection, with his ascension to Heaven, with his return, that it's gonna happen one day, soon, Jesus is victorious, and you can trust in that victory. So God gives Adam and Eve hope. Right? Go back to Genesis three. We see that we have hope in the midst of conflict through Christ crushing the head of the serpent. And look at verse 16, we see in the midst of the pain of bearing children in conflict, in marriage, we can trust in the one who gives life and leads us perfectly. God. Now turns, Jesus turns and addresses Eve, and I think there's a different tone here. He says to the woman, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and pain, you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be for or against your husband, and he shall rule over you when God decides, when He decrees, that he will multiply pain for Eve in childbearing. I don't think he's excited about that, but he knows that that she needs that as Adam needs his consequence of pain in order to to see the bigger problem, to understand the need to be reconciled to God. And you see, even in this pain that God gives her, in childbearing, she will bear children. God is going to keep giving life. He could have said to Adam and Eve, that's it. You rebel against me, you're going to die. You're not going to have any kids. It's done. You don't get to be fruitful and multiply. You could have said that, but he didn't. He's given the gift of new life. Yes, there are women who want to have children aren't able, and so there's sorrow and pain even in that, right? And all of you have had children, you've gone through much pain in that. And that is this consequence that had been ordained because of our sin, that God has chosen every woman bearing children, the labor for nine months in pregnancy, so many painful things you deal with, right? Morning sickness, nausea, back pain, tiredness, more tiredness. You could add the lists. I'm sure those of you have been pregnant recently, there's lots of pain in childbearing and then the little actual delivery. How painful is that? It's hard. This pain points us to a bigger problem that humanity has we rebelled against God. And every time you think about the pain that you went through in burying a child, or you remember the pain that someone else had, your mother had in burying you remember God is pointing us to a bigger problem, the distance between us and God, that the separation between us and God, because of our sin that needs to be dealt with through his work of reconciling us. God gives Eve the privilege of participating in the salvation of humanity, of preserving humanity through bearing children. He gives grace, even in this consequence, even in this pain. He's with her and with all women in this. But that pain tells us that we need a savior. We have rebelled. And I think that it's literally pain and childbearing, but I think it also can be stretching metaphorically to the pain of child rearing. All of us who are rearing children, raising children. You see, there's pain in that, right? You have the difficulty of getting a newborn child to learn to nurse when they're underweight, trying to help them gain weight. Please get past that birth weight using whatever means you can to get them to grow. Then you have the pain of infant mortality, the pain of women dying in pregnancy, the pain of rearing, of rearing rebellious 123, 1014, 19 year olds, right? The pain of all that that's painful, and that points us to a bigger need we have for a Savior, the pain of children fighting each other. Look at Cain and Abel. Cain murdering Abel, the pain of children rejecting their parents, the pain of wanting kids not having kids, the pain of wanting a relationship with kids and not having that relationship because the kids are estranged from you. The calm estranged from you, the conflict and relationship between parents and children. All this pain is very real, but it points us to a bigger problem. We need to be restored to God, our heavenly Father. We need a savior. We've seen the second half of the verse here. There's other consequences for Eve. It says your desire shall be for or literally against your husband, and he shall rule over you. If you look over at chapter four, verse seven, you see these same three words desire, the word for translated in the issue which really could be translated against, and then rule or master. Look over at chapter four, verse seven, God is talking to Cain, and he says, if you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is against you, but you must rule over it. The same three words in chapter three, verse 16, Eve's desire is against her husband, but he must rule over her. What we have here is a consequence of conflict in relationships selfishness. Eve is going to have a desire against her husband, a selfishness problem there, and not wanting to partner with him and work together with him. Well, they're meant to be a Power team, working together, filling the earth, being fruitful, multiplying and exercising dominion. As image bearers. They were meant to be this amazing team. And now there's this conflict where she's trying to be autonomous. She's trying to do things on her own and be selfish. You. And does that also affect Adam? Yeah, Adams desires against her, and he'd he's not partnering with her in a good way, but God's saying he needs, he needs to rule over her. That's not a negative ruling. Ian, I think there's different interpretations, and you might have a different view on that, but I think that God is telling Adam he needs to, to exercise godly leadership with her, the same way that the father exercises godly leadership with the son, the same way that Christ exercises good leadership over the whole of humanity. I think that God is telling Adam he needs to exercise leadership over her and the brokenness, the pain of the fall, affects all those relationships. It affects Eve partnering with Adam. It affects Adam leading and loving sacrificially. Eve, it affects every other human being since then, and the thing we see is that we have this broken relationship vertically, and it leads to conflict and selfishness horizontally, not just between a husband and a wife, but between roommates, between friends, between coworkers, conflict with siblings. Siblings never fight. Do they? Conflict between parents and their kids, where parents are being selfish. Conflict between kids and their parents, or their kids are being selfish. Conflict in the church, we see all kinds of selfishness and conflict popping up all over the place, and we need to, each one of us, rule over that selfishness through Christ, and we need to end relationships and the authority structures that God's provided partner together. Well, submitting to one another,
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this horizontal chaos and conflict should point us to a bigger problem, which is this relationship. Every time my kids are fighting with each other, which happens more often than I'd like it to, I think, Ah, why is this happening? And I get angry because I don't have to deal with it again, right? But actually, God's giving me an opportunity to point them through their conflict to a bigger problem, of them needing to be abiding in Christ, to being reconciled with God. So I need to put off this expectation that there will be no conflict in my home. Everything is going to be easy, because I'm amazing. No, I'm not. We're all sinners, and we need to be restored to God. We need to abide in him. The ones of us who know him need to draw near to Him every day. The ones who don't know him need to be saved and brought into relationship with God. That's the bigger problem that can only be addressed by Christ in the gospel. So every time you're tempted to be selfish, looks at Christ. He is the one who's able to perfectly love and partner Christ can enable you to put to death selfishness and to love others, to partner perfectly with those that God has joined you together with, in your family, in your church, in your different spheres where you serve and live, God is perfect in that we see Jesus in Ephesians, 532, the marriage is meant to be a picture of Christ in the church. It's meant to show us how Jesus, the perfect husband, loves his bride the church, right? That's what God wants us to be as His people in Revelation. 21 we see in the end, there will be no more tears, no more sadness, no more pain of relationships being broken. We can look forward to the day when all things will be made new, and all of us in Christ will experience perfect harmony. Can you imagine, on the new heavens and new earth, all of us together who are in Christ, perfectly loving each other, no selfishness, no one's desire against someone else, no one ruling in an abusive, domineering or a passive way. Because plenty of guys have ruled passively or angrily domineering and abused that authority, that position, that role, there's so much failure we see around us and in us, in me, Christ is the one who can do it perfectly, and so we look to him in the midst of the relational pain, look at the next point in verses 17 to 19. We see that in the midst of the pain of work and the certainty of death, we can trust in the one who feeds and sustains you. He will feed you, sustain you, and resurrect you. So Jesus now speaks to Adam. He says in verse 17, and to Adam, he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, curses the ground because of you, notice how much you talked about eating there. We seem to have issues with eating. Eating is a big deal. It's a wonderful gift. We all ate a lot last week. Probably it's a wonderful gift to eat, and yet it's at the heart sometimes of these temptations too. Look at verse 18 thorns and thistles. It shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken for you are dust into dust. You shall return, we see God here cursing the ground, making Adam's task difficult. Eve had that primary vocation of multiplying, of bearing children and being able to bring new life to the earth. Now that's not the only thing that she had to do, and that's not every woman's thing now, but Eve as the first woman and the only woman living then, she was going to have lots of kids, but in that vocation that God has given her, she has pain. And now what did God told Adam to do? Cultivate the ground work it. And now God's saying it's gonna be hard. You're gonna have pain in your work. You're gonna labor with difficulty and sweat and pain, but you'll eat. So again, just like with Eve, God's promise is pain, but. Know there's gonna be children coming. Babies will be born. God promises Adam, you will eat. And have we all eaten? God keeps providing, right? He keeps providing for us. We eat. But there's labor, there's difficulty, there's pain, I imagine before Adam just dropped the seed, just stuff just shoots up, but just fun, like, Ooh, look at that. That was cool. You just work in the garden. Was really easy. It was fun, and now he's gonna go out. And I've never been a farmer, but I've watched on Little House on the Prairie and other things like that. They eat a big breakfast, they go out and work for like, 12 hours, right? You're like in the sun, sweating, plowing the field, hoping for rain, but not too much rain, but, but some rain, like, it's just hard, and the earth is fighting against them. There's floods and tsunamis and famines and droughts and all these problems that come that fight against or imagine your favorite book about someone going to the jungle, or a movie about going to the jungle, and it's all trying to kill you. The earth is trying to kill him. The animals are trying to kill him. The Earth fights against us. It's hard. That's not the way God designed at the beginning. And yet, in the midst of that pain, in Adam's labor, in the midst of the earth seeking to kill him, and eventually he will die, we see that God feeds us and sustains us. Turn over to Psalm 145 you just grab the middle of your Bible. You get to the Psalms. Psalm 145 we see God's graciousness and continue to feed the Earth. Psalm 145 verse 15, Ian, 15, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food. In due season, you open your hand. You satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. Look at the kindness of God. He feeds the deer up on the mountain that nobody knows about, the Marmot. The marmots back there, they eat something. I don't know what the hoses in your car, if you park back there. He feeds the animals, right? He takes care of them. He feeds us. He cares for us. He gives us food. And in that, we see His goodness. And yet there's pain in it. There's pain even in the eating, there's pain in the working, there's pain in all of it. And that should remind us to a bigger problem. That's the check engine light, it's the fire alarm, it's the pain in your abdomen saying this work is hard. There's sweat in my brow, there's pain in the work, and that's because there's a broken relationship with God. I need to be redeemed, to be reconciled. God didn't design me to live away from him, turn over to Romans, to go to the New Testament. Pass the Gospels, past acts. Romans. Chapter Eight, we see that God has cursed the ground, like we said. He didn't curse Adam and Eve. He cursed the serpent and cursed the ground. And the ground the earth is waiting for redemption, waiting for Jesus to come back and make all things new when he restores the earth, when he makes a new earth and a new heavens where righteousness dwells. Second, Peter three and Revelation 21 talks about that. Look at Romans, chapter eight, verse 19. Romans eight, verse 19, For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, the creation itself is groaning. There's fires and more fires. There's earthquakes. If you look at those earthquake apps, there's earthquakes happening every day, all around the Earth, people dying, floods, drought, famine, plagues, pandemics. The earth is destroying. It's cursed. It's groaning. And all of that points us to this need for a Savior, the need to be restored to God. God is helping us to see it's not okay. We need to be restored to God. He's sending a message to the whole earth. You were created to worship me, to be in relationship with me. And if you're living now without that, and thinking everything's gonna be great, you can just live my life, ignore God, do whatever I want, it's gonna be fine. That's a lie. And all these natural disasters, not natural disasters, this is calamity from God, right? They're disasters happening. They're God saying, wake up, Repent, turn to me, I made you for a relationship with me, not to live on your own. And so God gives pain and work, and he curses the earth so that we would see that we need him, we would look to Him, not only pain and work. I know it looks different for each of us, right? Our jobs nowadays, most of us aren't plowing fields, sweating, having back pain in that boat, but there's difficult aspects of all of our jobs, right? Some more than others, and in that we can it can be redeemed. That's why Jesus Paul says in Colossians three, you can work for the Lord. I know a lot of you. We've been going through Genesis two talking about work. You've been thinking about, how can I work unto the Lord? We need help doing that, though, because it's hard, right? There's aspects of work that are hard. Yeah, there's pain in that. There's difficulty, and not the kind of productivity that we want. So we need God's help, his grace. In the midst of that, that pain in our work, we see also here in Genesis three, going back to that, that not only would Adam have pain in his work, and he would eat by the sweat of his brow, but it says in the end of verse 19, till you return to the ground. For out of it you are taken. For you are dust into dust, you shall return. That's what we call a chiasm. You have like a, a, b, b1, A, one. Structure here. So you see the same thing in the beginning and the end of those four lines till you return to the ground, skip two lines into dust. You shall return. See, repeat the same thing. It's Hebrew poetry, rhyming ideas in the middle, same thing again, out of it, you were taken for you are dust. You see God's emphasizing, you were made out of dust. Remember Genesis two. God formed him out of dust. He formed him out of dust. And now Adam is going to return to dust. The earth is going to be victorious in this battle that Adam has with the earth. He is going to die. And
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that's true for each of us, unless Christ returns first and we get our resurrected body without having to die. Most of us are gonna have to die like once you get past, I don't know, 18 for guys, 25 for women. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe it's older for ladies. But you get to this point where you're basically, you're on, you're kind of going downhill. You're dying, right? I'm dying. We're all dying. The doctors are keeping us alive. Praise God for medicine. Praise God for the YMCA and going for a walk around the block and eating healthy, we're fighting against it, but our bodies are they're breaking down, right? And praise God, we make it to 7080, 90, 100 but it's it's death. It's real, this curse that God's given, Adam, this consequence. It's real for all of us. But what does that point us to? It points us to the reality that God didn't create us to live separate from him. He didn't create us to live in a fallen world forever, where we would not be able to see him face to face. He doesn't want you to live in Arizona and he's in Spokane. He doesn't want you to be in England and he's over here. He wants to be with his children. And so he doesn't let us live forever in this state away from him. He wants us to be given immortality, resurrected bodies. And so we look forward to our hope is in the life God would give. Remember Abraham when God told him to kill Isaac, to sacrifice Isaac, God, Abraham believed that God would resurrect Isaac. There was an idea of resurrection. They understood that resurrection was coming. And Job understood resurrection. And God clearly teaches us throughout the Bible about resurrection. There's death and then there's resurrection. Listen to First Corinthians, 15, verse 20. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam, all die, so also in Christ, shall all be made alive, but each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits that is coming those who belong to Christ. And then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule, every authority and power, he must reign until he's put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. What does Christ throw in a lake of fire? In Revelation 20 death, he destroys it. Yes, Adam returns to dust. So does Eve. So will I? So? Will you? But we have a hope. Was Christ resurrected? Is Christ still laying in that tomb? No, no, he was resurrected. And so will you? You will be resurrected. The only question is, are you gonna be resurrected to live eternally with God in His Kingdom on the new earth, the new heavens, or will you be resurrected to eternal damnation away from God? We all will be resurrected. And so that's our hope, in the midst of the pain of work and the certainty of death, that we have a Savior who strengthens us to work hard for him and will give us new life one day in the resurrection, we see we keep going, that in the midst of the fall, we can trust the promises of God to bring that redemption. Look at verse 20. We see here God's God's kindness. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living you see Adam exercising his role of leading and exercising that role. There, he gives his wife a name, he calls her a name, and that name is Eve. And you see there God's gifts that she could be the mother of all living. Eve is your great, great, great, great. Keep going for a long time, grandmother, right? We're all related. Look at that. We're all in the same human family. We have the same mother we can look back to and look at the honor. Eve is the mother of all living and from her comes the one who would save all of us from the sin and the death that is on this earth, what a gift. God gives grace to Eve. He gives her the gift of being the mother of all living and we are in that line of people who get to bring life. You get to bring life. For some of us physically, but for all of us who are in Christ, we get to bring life by preaching the gospel. So people can come alive through the word of Jesus, through the word of God, they come alive. We get to be those who participate in life being given. Look at verse 21 we see God's grace here. Then the Lord God said, Behold the man. I'm sorry, verse 21 and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. This is the first killing in the new in the earth, right? God killed an animal. Doesn't say what animal? Maybe it was a lamb, maybe a different animal. He killed an animal and made skins for them. Did that animal do anything wrong? Had that animal sinned against God? That animal died in their place. That animal was a substitute. That animal died so they could be clothed. That animals blood was shed so they could have clothing to cover their guilt, to cover their shame. What is God doing here? He's giving them grace, and he's picturing how the Lord Jesus is gonna die in our place, right? What did Noah do when he got off the ark? He sacrificed animals. What did God tell the Israelites to do in Leviticus and all throughout the Pentateuch sacrifice all these animals. What did? What did they do? They kept killing animals after animals, after animals. What was the point of that? They were learning that someone can die in my place, substitute who would provide a covering, someone who would substitute be in my place, die in my place. To cover me, we turn forward to Hebrews nine. We see, ultimately, what is this covering that God does so graciously in verse 21 what is it pointing forward to Hebrews, which is before the Peters and the James? I always get those two confused. Hebrews nine. Verse 11, we see, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come even through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, He Christ entered once for all into the holy place, holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves, by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? That is the sacrifice that we needed. That's the one we need. We need the Lord Jesus. He's center stage in this whole thing. His death is what covers your sin. You have the opportunity, friend, if you haven't trusted in Jesus, to trust in him, don't think I can be a good person and it'll be okay. It's not true. Don't think I can do enough good deeds and outweigh my bad deeds. Don't think I can be religious and God will be happy with me. You need someone to die in your place. There's only one person who could do that, only one person who never sinned, who perfectly obeyed God, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He died in our place. He was sacrificed like those lambs were sacrificed so he could cover you, not with animal skins, but with his own righteousness. Jesus is the only one who can make you right with God. All the pain you feel in your body, the pain you have in relationships, the pain you have in work, the certainty of death that should point you to this reality. We need Jesus. If you haven't trusted in him, there's no better time than today. Trust in the Lord Jesus. Tomorrow is not promised, but the Lord Jesus says, If you come to me, I'll receive you. I'll forgive you. Says in Romans 10, if anyone confesses Him as Lord and believes in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, they'll be saved. Jesus says, Whoever comes comes to him, will receive life. Jesus gives life. He's the one that you should trust in, and if you have already trusted in him, because I know many of you have, we can rejoice that the certainty of being right with God is ours because of what Jesus did, not because you did a good job, not because you do your Bible studies every week, not because you're a member of this church or some other church. It's because of Christ. 100% your faith is in him. That's why you're right with God, and you can be confident that you will one day be taken out of this painful world to live with him. You'll never you'll be able to live face to face with him, never apart from him again. No more will sin enter in to your relationship with God and others, you will have the kind of relationship with God that he designed for Adam and Eve to have with him, but with so many other brothers and sisters in Christ, that's our hope, that's our joy, right? So we see that God made skins to cover them, and Jesus is the one who covers us, if we'll trust in Him, He's the only one clothes with his righteousness, his glory, His goodness. Look at verse 22 of Genesis three. We see also God's kindness here that doesn't let them live forever. Then the Lord God said Genesis 322, 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 of 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. Imagine the sadness for Adam and Eve to be driven out of the garden. It doesn't seem like they really wanted to go. Can you blame them? This perfect place that God made for them to live with him, God drives them out and puts cherubim with flaming sword so that nobody could get back there. Maybe he got destroyed in the flood, I don't know, but no one's been able to go back to the Garden of Eden. And why did God do that? Because he didn't want them to take from the tree of life and eat and live forever in this state where they're not with him. God didn't want them to be away from him, physically dead, spiritually like that. He wanted them to eventually die so they could be reunited with him in resurrected bodies. God is not content for us to continue on forever. We
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might think like, this is great, let's life's pretty good. Let's keep on going. I don't ever want to die. Jesus is saying, No, there's something better. It's better to live with me forever. Turn over to the end of your Bible. Go to the part where the words are defined and the maps are and stuff, and then turn back to the left a little bit revelation 22 the very end. This is what God wanted for them, and this is why he kept them from eating from that tree of life anymore. He wanted them to be able to die, to be able to be here with Jesus. Revelation, 22 verse one. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. They will see his face. That's why God wouldn't let them eat from the tree of life anymore. He wanted them to see his face. And if you've trusted in Jesus, you've seen the face of God and glory of Christ on the cross, but there's a guarantee that one day you're going to see him with eyes. You're going to see him face to face. You're going to live with him and eat Can you imagine what the fruit is going to be, that river of life coming from the throne of God and the Lamb and the 12 kinds of trees with giving the life different different flavors? Maybe there's a bacon flavored one and a pumpkin pie one, and who knows what kind of flavors are those fruits are going to be, but be amazing, and God is going to let us live with him. He'll be the light. We're going to walk by his glory. That is why we deal with pain and death now, because God wants us to be part of that. So how do we go through pain? Chris, horn, Quest has four helpful S's to help us think about pain. You can talk to him more about these to learn. But the first thing, as we go through pain, whether it's spiritual pain, relational pain, physical pain, we need to acknowledge that the pain hurts, right? But how do we go through it? We need to have these four S's. God is sovereign. God is not out of control. This is not a train that's going willy nilly off the tracks and God lost control of the steering wheel and it's going who knows where God is still wise. He's still good and great, sitting on his throne, reigning, ordaining what comes into our lives, even the pain, for our good, because He loves us. He knows he knows how it hurts, but he knows what he's doing, and he knows what's best. And we may never know exactly why, in God's wisdom, certain things have been ordained for us or have come into our lives, but we can trust that God is sovereign. He's good, he's great. Secondly, he has a purpose. He's sanctifying us. So sovereign. Second sanctifying. God is sanctifying us. He is making us holy. He's making us partakers of himself. He doesn't want us to have. Second best, a great life with all kinds of fun things. He wants us to have the best thing, which is him. He wants to purify our hearts and cause us to be like him. And so he ordains pain in our lives so that we'll be sanctified. How pain sanctifies us. David says in Psalm or Ezra, whoever 19, you afflicted me, and I've learned your ways. It's good for me that you afflicted me. Sovereign, sanctifying in solace. Chris explains that God Solace is like his comfort, but it's what only God can give. We can comfort each other, but only God gives solace. God is the God who gives us solace. He says to you, in the midst of your pain, I am here with you, and I know what you're going through, and I care, and I'm going to one day deliver you from this. Through the Lord Jesus, through the salvation of Christ, He cares and he gives comfort. There's no comfort like that, no pill that you're going to take, no alcohol, no pleasure you can escape to no being really busy with your job. None of that is going to give you the solace, the comfort that God can give. God alone gives solace, comfort, his grace. And finally, he gives strength, sovereign sanctifying, solace and strength, God gives us strength to endure, to make it to the end, to what to see him face to face. You need strength, because it's not easy. It's hard not to complain and get angry. You know, when I'm trying to fix the car and it just keeps breaking and the bolt won't come out, the rotor won't come free. Whatever. You know, there's all these problems. When you're trying to fix the car, you're trying to fix your house, and another pipe broke, another board's rotting, molds growing somewhere else. You're trying to fix your grass. There's more Moss, more mushrooms. You're trying to raise your kids. They're still sinning. There's this problem, that problem, you're trying to do your job, and there's all these things. It's like a whack a mole, right? Like we have so many things we go through. It's easy to get angry and to not trust God. We need strength to keep trusting Him, to keep looking to Him, to keep believing that what is best for us is him, not just removal of the pain. He's not going to take the pain away without removing the cancer. God has committed to the task of dealing with the biggest problem, which is our need to be reconciled to Him. He does that through Jesus. God gives us what we need through Christ. It's easy to assume and expect that everything's gonna be great, and then when it's not great, we get mad. But we need to see that God is good and sovereign and sanctifying and giving solace and strength in the midst of our pain. And he gives us so many blessings, like we see in Genesis three, so many blessings. Life continues on. We still eat, we still live, because God is gracious. So I encourage you look to God for grace in the midst of your pain, in the midst of your suffering, in the midst of the conflict. Christ is the Savior that we need. He's on center stage. All of this is pointing to Jesus. He is a powerful Savior. You can trust him. He is good. He is enough. Let's pray to Him, God, thank you for loving us enough to ordain pain in our lives, to ordain all these consequences of Adam and Eve's sin to all of us live with in different ways. Help us to see, as we look at Christ, that you are good, that you do love us. Help us to hope in Jesus, not in just removal of the pain, but in the fact that you understand our pain, you understand the suffering, and you are the Savior. We give you glory. We give you praise. Help us to look to you and help us to point to you that others might see from our lives that you are a good savior, one worth trusting in pray because of you, Jesus. Amen.
Nathan Thiry is the Growth Groups & Outreach Pastor at Faith Bible Church. He enjoys biking and outdoor activities, and has a passion to see the gospel spread throughout our community and the whole world!
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