The Fall of Man | Summer in the Systematics: Anthropology (Part 6)

Transcript

JRS 86
SUMMER IN THE SYSTEMATICS, Part 6
THE FALL OF MAN
7/19/2026
SELECTED SCRIPTURES
JESSE RANDOLPH

Welcome back everybody. We are launching into Part Six of our study all summer of Biblical Anthropology tonight, our study of the Doctrine of Man. Up to this point in the study, we’ve covered the following topics. We’ve looked at The Origin of Man as a created being, not the process of evolution from some earlier stage of being primordial goo. We’ve looked at the topic of The Image of God in Man which places mankind really in a category of his own, completely distinct from the plant world, completely distinct from the animal kingdom, completely distinct from the angelic realm. We’ve looked at the topic of The Constitution of Man meaning, man is both body and spirit or if you’re a trichotomist, he’s body, soul, and spirit. We’ve looked at The Design for Man meaning, God designed man to be male and female, that is there are only two sexes and then all of the implications that flow out from that truth especially today.

Then last week, we covered the topic of The Intrinsic Value of Man where we looked at The Intrinsic Value of Man at Conception, which fed into the topic of how to think Biblically about abortion. We looked at The Intrinsic Value of Man in Life, which fed into the topic of not maligning or demeaning fellow-image bearers on the basis of different skin color, nationality etc. And then we looked at The Intrinsic Value of Man in Death, which led to a very brief discussion of matters like suicide and euthanasia.

Now tonight we’re turning a corner theologically in our study, as we move on from what God made us to be to who we now are. God made us His image-bearers, and we still are. God made us body and soul, and we still are. God made us to be male or female, and we still are. But what we are now also, and we weren’t originally designed to be this way, we are sinners. We still bear God’s image, we still have intrinsic value, we still have worth and meaning and purpose, but we are sinners. We are sinners on account of this event known as the Fall.

That is our subject of study tonight. THE FALL OF MAN. If you’re taking notes this evening, I’ve got three points for you. Feel free to fill out these out right away. First, we’ll look at THE TEMPTATION OF MAN. Second, we will briefly look at the events surrounding the actual THE FALL OF MAN. And then third, and I think we’ll spend most of our time here, we’ll look at THE CONSEQUENCES FOR MAN.

Let’s start with THE TEMPTATION OF MAN. That’s our first point. We know that when the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve were created by God, they were created in God’s image. Not only were the first man and the first woman created in God’s image, but they were also created to exercise authority over the rest of God’s creation.

We see this in a couple of places on the early pages of Genesis. Like here in Genesis 1:26-30. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.’ Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given to you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has the fruit of the tree yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that creeps on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food’; and it was so.” Then we have this, Genesis 2:19-20. “And out of the ground Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and He brought each to the man to see what he would call it; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field.” What these two initial passages show us and tell us is that the first man, first woman, Adam and Eve, they were not only uniquely privileged, but they had a tremendous amount of responsibility. Some of the verbs that we just read there are they were to fill and they were to multiply and they were to subdue and they were to have dominion.

Now the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve, they should have been up for it. They should have been up for the task because God had given them certain abilities and certain capacities and certain capabilities in their original, pristine, sin-free state. Adam clearly had powers of understanding and reason. We see that in a place like Genesis 2:20, where he was giving names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. He’s naming animals. He’s able to process and think and reason. In Genesis 2:23 we see that he understands, Adam does, how Eve is related to himself. “Then the man said, ‘This one finally is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, because this one was taken out of Man.’” There was also this ability on Adam’s part to formulate words and structure sentences and process and understand the speech of others, including God’s when God was communicating with him. Genesis 2:16 says “Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may surely eat.’” Adam heard that, Adam processed that, Adam understood that. Further in his original state, man in his original capacity as a bearer of God’s image, had a moral capacity. He had a moral nature. And man, we know when he was created, was created without sin, meaning he was innocent of wrong.

Adam in his initial position, before the Fall, was what theologians call in a state of passive holiness, meaning he was able on account of his sinlessness at the time, to enjoy unhindered fellowship with God. To have communion with God. So, he was in a state of passive holiness. He wasn’t positively holy in his original condition. To be positively holy would have meant that he was completely unable to choose sin. And we know that’s not who Adam was and that was not his original state because he did what? He chose sin. So, we would say he was passively holy in that original state, not positively holy. Adam had these initial intellectual capacities. He could reason and he could talk and he could process and he could understand. He had certain moral capacities. He was in this sinless position, this sinless state, which again does not mean that he was unable to sin but instead simply meant that he had not sinned and therefore was in a right relationship with God.

We also know from Scripture that God had given Adam certain tasks, certain responsibilities. As we’ve already seen from Genesis 1:28, Adam was to exercise dominion over all the earth. He was with Eve, to fill and populate the earth. He was to administer the earth and its creatures. In fact, it’s into that context that in which Adam was given this command to cultivate and keep the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:15, “Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” Adam was not only to cultivate and keep and tend the garden in which God had placed him, but because God is good and God is generous and God has always been good and God has always been generous, God actually gave Adam permission to enjoy the fruits of his labor in the garden. Genesis 2:16, “And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may surely eat.” Or as some translations have that, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat.” The idea here just jumps off that page at you, is that what God said here as He imparted to Adam what He imparted, these were not words of restriction. Rather these were words of provision. These are not words of withholding, rather these are words of giving. God here is not closing His hand toward Adam; He’s rather opening His hand toward Adam.

Now that being so, God did place a single limit on what Adam could enjoy in the Garden. Genesis 2:17, “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (this is God still speaking directly to Adam) you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Now this was a test. A test to determine whether or not Adam would obey God. And the way to pass this test was really simple. All Adam had to do, and all his wife Eve had to do was to comply with this one restriction, to adhere to this one limitation, by not eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they violated this single restriction, if they ate of the forbidden fruit, a penalty would be attached. That penalty being death. Genesis 2:17, “You shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

So, Adam and Eve, though created perfect, though created sinless as they came from the hands of their Creator, they were given a test. A test in which would give them the opportunity to discern on the spot, in the moment, between good and evil options. The good option being obedience to God. The evil option being disobeying God. The test was really simple, and the outcome of the test was going to be really simple. Obedience would mean eternal life. You obey God, you pass the test and I think in that context what would have happened is God would have then allowed them to eat from the other tree, the tree of life. But disobedience on the other hand meant death. All they had to do was a simple test and a simple requirement, was heed God’s Words. All they had to was in the midst of God’s overall abundant provision, steer clear of one tree. All they had to do was heed these words from God himself in Genesis 2:17, “You shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’”

The tree itself, we don’t have a picture of this tree. The tree in its own right was neither good nor evil. In fact, the only description given of the tree itself is in Genesis 3:6 where “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise.” What is really significant about this tree is what would result from eating its fruit; namely knowledge between good and evil. It appears that what God wanted Adam and Eve to do was to learn from experience how it goes in differentiating between good and evil. God didn’t want the man and woman to shortcut their way to that kind of knowledge by eating of the fruit of this tree. That is why later, when Adam and Eve sinned and they fell, we have this in Genesis 3:22-23. This is after fall. “Then Yahweh God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us to know good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever’ therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.”

Now some have asked with such a minor prohibition. A prohibition on eating just this one fruit from this one tree, why would it be it such a major deal for Adam and Eve if they were to violate that single prohibition? Well, it is true that God laid down a single prohibition, and it’s true in one sense at least that it was minor. It was limited, especially when we consider the variety of trees which were available for Adam and Eve to partake of throughout the garden. But in another sense, this was a very major matter since this was the very specific way, delineated explicitly by God, through which Adam and Eve could show their obedience or their disobedience to Him.

Michael Svigel of Dallas Seminary captures these issues nicely when he says, “Perhaps this account would be more understandable if the first sin had been a capital crime, if Eve had struck Adam down in a rage or Adam had slaughtered all the animals just for fun. But eating a piece of fruit? On the other hand, God could have easily said, ‘I didn’t ask for much. I gave you everything and demanded restraint in one little thing’. The fact is the simplicity of this command shows the importance of devotion and obedience to our Creator in everything, not just the things we believe are important. In other words, the eating of the fruit was a simple act that points to the far greater issue of rejecting God’s authority and thus offending His honor.” That’s a really good word, a timely word, and an applicable word because I think we might have that temptation at times to think oh that’s just one of those minor requirements or those minor commands God’s given us in His Word. And the Adam and Eve account in Svigel’s recitation of it here I think helps us correct that way of thinking.

Well, arriving on the scene next in this early Genesis account was a tempter. God had laid out the test for Adam and Eve. They were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And this tempter arrived on the scene, and he’s introduced here in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made.”

Now, who was this serpent? Who was the tempter? Was it an actual serpent? Was it Satan, appearing as a serpent? I think the answer to both of those questions is yes. This was an actual serpent, with Satan presenting himself through the form of the serpent. Satan didn’t appear as himself, but instead he appeared as this animal with whom Eve would have been familiar. Had Satan appeared as himself on this scene, this would have caused Eve’s antennae so to speak to go up. It would have put her on guard. So, Satan instead in an act of true cunning and craftiness, took on the form of a serpent. Now the serpent says and here’s his craftiness on display, Genesis 3:1, “was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made.”

Now I understand that here in Genesis 3:1, it does not specifically say Moses didn’t write that the serpent is Satan or that the serpent was Satan, but I do think there are some Biblical evidences to support the argument that this is Satan taking the form of the serpent. Like Revelation 12:9, “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” Revelation 20:2, “And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.” I think we have an allusion to this identity of this serpent even here in Romans 16:20 where Paul in this greeting says, “And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” So, the avenue through which temptation to sin first came to man and woman, was this serpent. However, the temptation can also be seen as, I think, coming through Satan. So just as Satan inspired Cain to kill his brother, as we see here even and kind of alluded to by Jesus in John 8:44 when He says, “You are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning.” Satan was also involved through a serpent in the temptation of Adam and Eve. Michael Svigel says, “As a creature meant to be under humanity’s control, the serpent, no doubt controlled by Satan, tempted humanity to rebel against their Creator.” Satan we know, fell from heaven at an earlier point in time than the events recorded here in Genesis 3. Jesus Himself referred to this event the fall of Satan from heaven when He said, in Luke 10:18, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” That event of Satan’s fall is recorded in one perhaps two places in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. And then later, Satan through a serpent in Genesis 3 tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Now when the moment came for Satan to tempt Adam and Eve, his tactics and his tricks, as they always are and always have been, they were multi-dimensional. This included taking the form of a serpent, a creature who was already defined and described here as being more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And Satan didn’t merely take the form of a serpent but a talking serpent at that. And it wasn’t just that Satan took the form of a talking serpent. It’s what came out of the serpent’s mouth as he began to talk that we really need to take notice of. It’s really the nature of his tactics as he spoke that we need to pay attention to. One of these tactics that Satan deployed was that of distortion. Satan came right after Eve through the serpent’s mouth and said in Genesis 3:1, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” Now though that’s formed as a question, that’s really a statement. Satan here is through the serpent, really misrepresenting the facts by saying that God had prohibited the couple from eating “from any tree of the garden.” But God had said no such thing. No. What is recorded here, in Genesis 2:16-17, this is what God actually said. He said, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; or freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Well, Satan’s tactics of distortion apparently worked because in her response to him, Eve answered in a very interesting and confused way. Remember God had generously allowed and permitted that Adam could eat of anything in the garden with just that one exception. R. Kent Hughes captures the liberation and freedom that was given to the man with the first command in Genesis 2:16, He says “God’s word to him was first permissive. ‘And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.’ Adam was to partake of everything in the garden to his heart’s content, which included the tree of life. This is lavish, extravagant abundance, and Adam could take from the tree of life if he wanted it. Everything was there for him, everything he could possibly want. This really summarizes the provision that God made in this Genesis 2 statement to Adam.

Well now that she’s been questioned about what God actually said, and as she’s now engaging with this serpent, Eve’s mind later on goes in a totally different direction. Her mind goes in the direction of God’s restriction rather than God’s generous provision. God had said Genesis 2:16, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat.” But that’s not how the woman reported the situation back to the serpent. Instead, in Genesis 3:2 it says, “And the woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.’” Not freely eat, not surely eat. She’s not quoting God accurately here. She just says we may eat. Eve here is severely downplaying God’s generosity. She’s severely downplaying the liberty that God had granted both to she and to Adam. Also, Eve exaggerated God’s one prohibition. God had said again in Genesis 2:16-17, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’”

In other words, the restriction was limited exclusively to eating. Well in her interaction with the serpent, Eve made the statement that she and Adam were not allowed to eat from the tree but even to touch the tree. Here’s Genesis 3:2-3, “And the woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God said, You shall not eat from it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.” She was embellishing. She was exaggerating. She was misrepresenting what God had actually said and what He had actually prohibited.

There’s also this matter and this one tends to get overlooked. But note that while God Himself refers to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by its proper name. In Genesis 2:17, He refers to it as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve in responding to the serpent, she doesn’t call the tree by its name, the name that God used in describing it. Instead, she uses this very watered-down expression which really depletes and dilutes the tree’s meaning and significance. She in talking back to the serpent, refers to the tree as in Genesis 3:3, “the tree which is in the midst of the garden.” Not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if things had actually did and discerned. Just that tree that’s in the midst of the garden. See one of Satan’s tactics, and it always has been and continues to be is distortion, distorting the truth.

Well from there Satan moving on from distortion moved right onto outright deceit and an outright denial of God’s warning. Genesis 3:4, “And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die!’” So, Satan masqueraded as a serpent. He distorted the truth. He outright refuted and challenged the words of God proving himself to be the father of lies. Kent Hughes again notes that “The pathology of this dialogue of descent is so clear: Satan offers a question based on the perversion of God’s word. Eve then begins to question it herself, as is evidenced by her revisions of God’s word. That’s the touch it comments and then Satan is free to declare God’s word as wrong.”

Well, the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve, they fell for it. They failed the test. They sinned. They fell. And that brings us to our second point, THE FALL OF MAN. Sadly, Eve didn’t see through the serpent’s deception and lies. She didn’t refuse the temptation. Rather she was deceived by the serpent as Paul picks up here in 2 Corinthians 11:3, that “The serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness.” She then ate from the tree and then she gave the forbidden fruit to Adam to partake and he partook. Genesis 3:6. “Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, so she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

So Eve sinned and Adam sinned, and mankind fell. And this account that’s given in Genesis 3 is this watershed moment. This groundbreaking moment, this tragic moment in the history of the world. Owen Strachan notes that “There is no tragedy like the tragedy of the historical fall of the human race. Biblical Christianity brooks no rivals when it comes to this momentous event. The fall of Adam and Eve following the creation of the world is symphonic in its terribleness. The fall represents holistic personal rejection of God by Adam and Eve. It is demolitional moment, a spiritual extinction-level event.”

And how did it all happen? How did it all go down? Well again Satan placed doubt in Eve’s mind of the goodness of God in placing even one restriction on her and her husband’s enjoyment of what had given to them in the Garden. Satan denied that what God had said was true. Satan was calling God a liar, in other words. And then he put the thought in Eve’s mind of acting independently of God and eating the forbidden fruit, and by doing so, becoming like God. And then soon after Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, she gave some to Adam and he ate as well, and the entire human race fell.

Andreas Köstenberger notes that “The fall of humanity was engineered by a complete reversal of the divine design. Instead of God’s authority being mediated from Adam to Eve to the rest of creation, the biblical fall narrative recounts how the Serpent (Satan) approached Eve, who took the initiative, with Adam following her lead, in breaking God’s commandment.”

This is the one transgression that’s mentioned in Romans 5:18 and it changed everything, forever. As Robert Lightner notes, “Adam and Eve became sinners because they sinned. All since then, except Christ, sin because they are sinners. This first pair got a sin nature because they sinned. All their posterity sin because each one has a sin nature.”

Now some will ask and some have asked, since God is in control of everything and since God is sovereign over everything, is it really accurate or is it really right to say that sin actually originated with Adam? Didn’t sin in the ultimate sense, originate with God, the way that everything in the ultimately sense originates with God?

We have to be very careful with language and statements like that. We know from Scripture, that God cannot sin. We know from Scripture that God cannot tempt anyone to sin. That’s James 1:13. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” So if God is not the origin of sin where did sin come from? Where did sin originate? Well the origin of sin is a deep mystery, it’s a dark mystery. And we know and we can say that God is not, and cannot be the chargeable cause of sin.

Rather what we do know from the Genesis account is that two created people, Adam and Eve, they sinned. We also know that a created angel tempted them to sin. A fallen angel. And we know that they must have had the potential to sin because they did sin. There must have already been the potential to sin that existed within them.

So taking that line of thought a little bit further, Adam and Eve, were created as morally free, sinless beings, with the ability to sin or not to sin. And each made the personal decision at the time they did so, to disobey God. They fell from a free act of revolt against God. They chose to act autonomously. They chose to disobey God rather than to love God. Consequently, as creatures with free will, they would end up being accountable to their Creator.

So no sin does not originate with God in the sense of something we can charge to God. We cannot blame God and lay sin at the feet of God. Rather sin lies at the feet of those people who choose to disobey, whether it was Satan when he fell, whether it was Adam and Eve when they were subject to Satan’s temptation, when they fell to his tempting ways. And it’s true each one of us as well when we sin. We are responsible.

We’ve looked at the temptation of man. We’ve just considered the fall of man. And that brings us now to our third point for this evening, THE CONSEQUENCES FOR MAN. Adam and Eve when they sinned, when they fell, they were instantly faced with the reality that sin always disappoints. Sin never satisfies. Sin always promises big winnings and then it underpays.

Embracing the lies of the serpent, Adam and Eve both thought at some level that they could become like God, enlightened, fulfilled, having partaken of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the opposite occurred. When Adam and Eve ate of that forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened. That’s what it says here in Genesis 3:7. But their eyes weren’t opened in the ways they had expected. It says “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”

What’s being communicated here is that Adam and Eve when they sinned and when they fell, the didn’t experience, they didn’t discover immediate contentment and bliss when they partook of that forbidden fruit. Rather what they experienced was guilt and shame. They were immediately aware of their nakedness and they were ashamed. And so they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

When they were first formed by their Maker, again they were innocent, they were sinless. They didn’t have a sinful nature. They had committed no sin. But now here they’re described as having this sense of shame, and degradation, and pollution. Now they felt like there was something to hide. They’re naked and they’re living with this sense of unfitness and embarrassment in their fallen condition. And that leaves them ashamed not only to appear before God, but even to be in each other’s presence. These two at this moment were absolutely morally ruined.

Well in addition to shame, Adam and Eve experienced something else for the first time which was fear. So they experienced shame, they also experienced fear. When they heard God walking in the Garden it says they (Genesis 3:8) “hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden.” And not only that, Adam said in Genesis 3:10, “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” He’s experiencing fear here, expressing fear. So at one point they were in fellowship with God, they had a right relationship with God, they had a right standing before God. And now fear is reigning in their hearts, and Adam is described here as hiding from God because of his fear. So they experienced shame.

They also experienced blame. Their guilty consciences wouldn’t give them any rest so they began to blame. They experienced shame and fear and now we have blame. They start shifting responsibility. Adam said that it was Eve who led them into sin. (Genesis 3:12) “And the man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave to me from the tree, and I ate.’” And you can note here that he’s not only blaming Eve, he is indirectly and not really all that indirectly blaming God for giving her to him in the first place.

And then Eve in turn, she blamed the serpent. (Genesis 3:13) “Then Yahweh God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” So both Adam and Eve were guilty and both were trying to shift responsibility to the other one and to the serpent and in some way to God. And it’s a tactic which sadly, did not end with Adam and Eve, this blame game thing. It’s sadly a tactic that has plagued the human race ever since.

As descendants of Adam as humans, we do have this innate knack for passing the buck do we not? For assigning blame to others? It couldn’t have been us who is at fault. And just assuming if not demanding that the guilt for the sins that we commit be passed onto someone else. Yes, I stole from the cash register, but that’s because my boss isn’t paying me enough. Yes, I used those unkind words toward my sister, but that’s because she was unkind toward me first. Yes, I used these harsh words in my letter or my email to so-and-so, but you should have seen what they said to me first. It goes on and on. We play the blame game just like Adam and Eve did.

Well the consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s sin, extended far beyond the ones I’ve just mentioned like guilt and fear and shame and blame. Rather the consequences of the sin of man and the fall of man, have been multi-faceted, and long-lasting, and far-reaching.

Let’s start with some of the more immediate consequences of the fall of man starting with Adam and Eve directly. Adam and Eve suffered several immediate effects of the fall.
Starting with fact they were expelled from the garden. Genesis 3:23,24. “Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Now man was in this state, post fall, likely expelled from the Garden to prevent him from gaining access to the tree of life, because if he would have eaten from the tree of life at this point in his fallen state, he would have been eternally confirmed in that position of spiritual death and just all that entails as we’ll get into in a moment. So I actually think this was a gracious provision by God in expelling him from the garden.

Second, Adam and Eve experienced a change in relationship with one another. (Genesis 3:16) “To the woman He said (this is God imparting curses) ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’” Both man and woman, husband and wife would suffer in their respective roles. The desire of the woman would be for her husband. I don’t take this to be some form of sexual desire for the husband or a desire to fold under the husband’s headship or leadership. I instead take this to mean an unruly desire to rule over her husband.

But then the wife would find, what Eve would find is that he would actually rule over you as it says. The sense here is that he would be the one who would be ruling her with a heavy handed, iron-fist. What’s predicted here in other words, is that there would now be struggle and conflict within marriage. God’s design had been one of companionship, harmony, and compatibility, but now it would be marked by rebellion and oppression.

Third. Eve apparently experienced some change in her anatomy, some form of structural change in her body which resulted now in severely painful childbirth. Genesis 3:16. “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain and conception, in pain you will bear children.’” Presumably had Eve experienced childbirth before the Fall, it would have involved significantly less pain, perhaps no pain. But now as a judgment on the woman, she would experience pain in childbirth.

So Adam and Eve had disobeyed God’s explicit command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they were guilty. They experienced immediate fear and guilt and shame and blame. They experienced expulsion from the Garden. They experienced a new phenomenon, the introduction of tension into their relationship. And to make matters worse, both Adam and Eve are now facing the reality of death. That includes physical death. Not immediately, not instantly, but progressively, eventually. We do know Adam lived to be 930 years old. But God told Adam in the moment, at the time the curse was imparted, (Genesis 3:19) “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” So they did experience physical death.

They also experienced spiritual death and this was right away. Once in fellowship with God, once in communion with God, they were now cut off. This started with being expelled from the Garden. (Genesis 3:23) “Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out.” And we already saw that passage.

But the point is they were now separated from God. They had experienced how this total loss of spiritual life and fellowship with the God who had made them. And on top of that they were now facing the reality of eternal death which we’ll get into in just a moment.

The point is, God had warned Adam, back in Genesis 2:17. “From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” And now having eaten from that one tree, the one tree they were prohibited from eating from, they were now paying the penalty for disobeying. And their penalty was death. Immediate spiritual death, the reality of one-day physical death, and the threat of eternal death.

Now this curse of death has been passed down now to all who are in Adam, to every member of the human race. This process of physical death started when Adam and Eve sinned and the first human death first occurred when the offspring of Adam and Eve, Cain, killed his brother, as we see in Genesis 4:8.

Then we get to Genesis 5 and the list of descendants of Adam and Eve, paints this very dark picture because over and over we see this graveyard passage in Genesis 5 where every one of these descendants died. And then physical life became shorter and shorter after the flood so that so that by the times of Moses, you get him saying in Psalm 90:10, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to might, eighty years.”

And the fact that our physical lives are as short as they are today, 70 maybe 80, if due to might, the fact that they are as short as they are, is not on account some sort of secular naturalistic evolutionary hypothesis. In fact, if evolutionary theory were true, one would think that we would evolve into being longer-living creatures, not shorter living shorter and shorter lives.

Rather, the brevity of our lives is especially when compared to those early patriarchs is directly attributable to Adam’s fall, to original sin. (Romans 6:23) “For the wages of sin (as Paul says) is death.” And the result is laid out for us here in Job 14:1,2. “Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not stand.”

With just a handful of exceptions, Enoch, Elijah, those will be alive at the Rapture, physical death now consumes all descendants of Adam. As the writer of Hebrews notes, (Hebrews 9:27) “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.”

Well the Fall of Man led not only to the curse of physical death being handed down not just to man, to Adam, but to all men. But the curse of spiritual death has also been passed down as we see here in Romans 5:12. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

That sin entered the world through Adam, what it means is that sin started to run its course in the human race as a consequence of the sin of Adam. That we are now a sinful race and sinful people, traces back directly to the sin of Adam. Romans 5:19 . “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners.”

As a result of Adam’s sin, all living people with the exception of course of the Lord Jesus are born spiritually dead. Ephesians 2:1. “You were dead in your transgressions and sins.” For Adam and Eve, sin brought immediate separation from God, banishment from God’s presence, forfeiture of spiritual life. And the judgment which was passed down on them, on Adam and Eve, has been passed down to the entire human race.

(Romans 5:16) “The judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation.” (Romans 5:18) “Through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” These are saying that Adam’s sin has been passed down to the whole of the human race, so that all of humanity ever since has become subject to death and been born spiritually dead, facing the wrath of God. (Romans 1:18) “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven (Paul says) against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In light of what Adam did in committing that first sin, this is the barrel of the shotgun so to speak that we’re staring down when we enter into this world. Ephesians 5:6. “The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” We’re all born sons of disobedience.

In our natural-born condition we are not only sinful but we’re sinners. We are not only facing God’s wrath, but we’re spiritually dead and unable in our flesh to respond to the truth. Romans 8:7,8 says “the mind set on the flesh is at enmity toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.”

1 Corinthians 2:14. “But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined.” 2 Corinthians 4:4. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So in our original condition, born into sin as Adam’s race, in Adam’s line, we’re born into this condition, facing the wrath of God and unable in our fallen nature to respond even to truth.

Instead it’s only by the divine miracle of regeneration, that God is the One who puts an end to our position of spiritual death and makes us alive to Himself. Ephesians 2:4,5. “But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.” God is the One who does it. (2 Corinthians 4:6) “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” Again God has to be the One to do it.

So that’s a little bit about the reality of spiritual death and how that condition traces back to our subject of study this evening, the Fall of Man.

Well the Fall of man resulted not only in Adam and Eve’s descendants being born spiritually dead and facing physical death, but also facing eternal death. Eternal death awaits all those who physically die while being in a condition of being spiritually dead. And we know from Scripture and we get to the end of the Bible and the book of Revelation, that all those who die in unbelief will face the lake of fire forever, what John calls the second death. While eternal death does not cause people to cease to exist, the Bible does not teach a position of annihilationism, where people are eventually snuffed out. Eternal death is what it says, eternal. It’s a kind of death still because it involves everlasting ruin and everlasting divine punishment.

So we’ve worked through now some of the immediate consequences of the Fall to Adam and Eve personally. Fear, shame, blame, relational strife, conflict, expulsion from the Garden, physical, spiritual, and eternal death.

Well the sin of the first man and woman, of Adam and Eve also had a broader impact on the people around them, the people of their day. It was soon after the Fall as I mentioned just a moment ago that Cain slew his brother Abel. Genesis 4:8. “Then Cain spoke to Abel his brother; and it happened when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.”

That wouldn’t have happened in a pre-Fall world. It was soon after the Fall, that Lamech killed a young man who had struck him. Genesis 4:23 he confesses. He says “For I have killed a man for striking me; and a boy for wounding me.” That wouldn’t have happened in a pre-Fall world. And just read the news stories, read history, read world history and we see that the history of world, man’s history has been this bloody record of continual wars and hatred and strife and murder. That wouldn’t have happened in a pre-Fall world.

Another ramification or a consequence of the fall of man, went beyond Adam and Eve as individuals as persons. And it goes beyond even us human beings today. Rather through the fall, the entire creation was cursed. Man was created to subdue and rule the earth. Psalm 8:4-8 puts it this way. “What is man that You remember him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the animals of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”

But now on account of the Fall, the creation is going to and it does work against man and work against his efforts and it frustrates his efforts. Immediately after the Fall we’re told, the ground was cursed. The creation was cursed. The earth was cursed with thistles and thorns. Genesis 3:17,18. “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat from it; cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field’.”

So no longer would the earth spontaneously sprout forth fruit, not without the sweat and toil of man. It was going to be hard labor that Adam would now have to face. That was his fate and it was all because of the sin that entered the world and the curse that now had been placed on the earth. This reality is picked up in a couple of place in the New Testament. Paul says in Romans 8:20 that the “creation was subjected to futility.” He says a couple of verses later, (Romans 8:22) “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.”

Well thankfully right between those passages is this one. (Romans 8:2) A time is coming where “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” We know that a day is coming, when Christ returns and rules and reigns and sets up his earthly kingdom here on earth. That the curse that has been placed on the earth will be lifted. And there’ll be restoration as this planet is brought to a place of peace and pristine beauty.

We’re told of this in Isaiah 35. We’re told of this Isaiah 11:6-9. The scene where the “wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a young boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the nursing baby will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. They will do no evil nor act corruptly in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea.”

Or later in Isaiah 65:25, something similar is described. “‘The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil nor act corruptly in all My holy mountain,’ says Yahweh.” He’s speaking of future kingdom realities. Hosea 2:18 says something similar. “And in that day I will cut a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will break the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make them lie down in security.”

Again this is all out in the future. We’re talking future kingdom realities here. And here tonight we’re still in the topic of how we got here in the first place. How mankind fell. How this world, how this planet became cursed.

And along those lines we can’t forget that when that divine curse came down on creation on account of man’s Fall, it also included a curse on the serpent himself. Genesis 3:14. “Yahweh God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you more than any of the cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life.’” Meaning the serpent went through some sort of anatomical change as a result of the curse. Perhaps he was some sort of upright walking creature, picture that, before being cursed. But now he’s to crawl on his belly, sucking up the dust of the earth as he slithers along.

Also there came judgment on Satan. This will be a deeper dive when we get into Angelology in a few years. Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” There would be enmity between Satan’s seed and the woman’s seed. “You shall bruise Him on the head and He shall bruise you on the heel.”

This I do believe is pointing to Christ’s decisive death blow of Satan on the cross where in Colossians 2:15 we read this. “Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.” Hebrews 2:14,15 says “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Again we’ll get to Genesis 3:15 in a couple years.

There are additional consequences to the Fall of man as well. These would be more like longer-term ramifications of sin, like remembering the reality that sin always affects others. Eve’s sin affected Adam. Adam’s sin has affected the entire human race. No one sins truly in private as in that it has no ramifications for other people or other situations or other circumstances. All that we do and all that we fail to do when we sin has some downstream effect, somehow, some way on someone.

Second is the reality that sin, though it is forgiven through the cross, it can never in another sense be undone. There’s always forgiveness for sin, offered through Jesus Christ and true forgiveness can be experienced and true restoration can occur. But sin even while forgiven has consequences. Sin still does have a long tail.

Adam and Eve learned this because they were expelled from the Garden and not allowed to return. Esau learned this because he sold his birthright to Jacob and wasn’t able to recover it later as mentioned here in Hebrews 12:17.

Moses knew this because he was personally disallowed from entering into the promised land and only able to see it from a distance because of his sin. Each of those is a sobering reminder that sin though forgiven, it still has consequences and sin though forgiven does still have ramifications and that includes Adam’s original sin whose consequences and ramifications even trickle down to us today.

So tonight we’ve been covering The Fall of Man. An event which took place on a certain day in history and is recorded in a certain section of Holy Scripture, Genesis 3. And it’s an event whose dark shadow has been cast over all of human history. Through Adam the entire human race was plunged into death and sin and evil. In Adam as we’ve seen were unable to come to God, unable to of our own devises or of ourselves, come to know the Lord. In Adam we’re unable to please the Lord.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:18, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” In Adam, we neither want nor follow God’s will. In Adam, we can’t even understand the things of God as we saw in 1 Corinthians 2:14. In Adam we are totally depraved and unable to come to God. And yet and we’ll leave it here, Romans 5:20 says, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

When we talk about the fall of man and we talk about the entrance of sin into the world, how could we not talk about and thank the Lord for the cross of Jesus Christ. Yes, the fall of man and the curse on Adam has cast this long, dark shadow on the human race. But we, who have put in our faith in Jesus Christ, we stand in an entirely different shadow, the shadow of the cross. Praise the Lord for the mercy and the forgiveness He offers to fallen, ruined sinners like us. Let’s end there by praying.