Word of Salvation – Vol. 32 No. 08 – Feb 1987

 

The Fall Of Man

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on
            Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 3b, Q. and A. 7

Reading: Genesis 3

 

This afternoon we want to concern ourselves with The Fall of man into sin.

We know from Gen.1 & 2 that God created man good and after His own image.

But man today is of course not the same as he was in paradise.  The picture that we get from the Bible about man before the entrance of sin is quite different to the picture we have of man after the entrance of sin.

The difference between the "before" and "after" is due to The Fall.  The Christian church has always traced man's corrupt and sinful nature back to The Fall.  The Fall has a lot to say as to why man's behaviour is the way it is.

Because of The Fall, man is a sinful creature before God and his fallen human nature inclines him to destroy himself and his fellow man.

Man himself has of course not always accepted the biblical explanation of his corruption and depravity.

In fact, in the centuries after the Reformation, and I am thinking of the 18th to 19th centuries and up to the early part of Our 20^th century, man was quite determined to dismiss the account of The Fall, as we find it in Gen.3, as a lot of nonsense.

There were several reasons for this: there came thinkers who began to appeal to man's reason and intellect as a basis on which to build a better and more progressive humanity.

Along with this appeal to man's reason came new discoveries that had a great impact upon man s way of life.

A new age had dawned upon mankind, an age of reason, of industrial revolution, of scientific advancement.

Also, that old world of Europe expanded itself as explorers came back from their journeys with accounts of rich resources in other lands.  It was also the age of colonialism.

Well, the result of all this new activity was that the biblical account of the creation of the world and of man by God, and of man's subsequent fall into sin, was pushed far into the background and its historical character denied.

It was believed that there were forces in man which only now were beginning to be utilized by modern man.

These forces in man and in the natural world had to be discovered and made use of.  There was great potential in man, ready to be tapped.

The Fall was pushed away into the background.  There was a great potential, the expectations were high.

But then came two devastating world wars, and a whole series of lesser wars, all of which had repercussions throughout the world.

It was discovered that man was also capable of bringing about unnecessary tragedy.

It was found that man's reason could also lead him into brutality and aggression against other peoples of the world.

Furthermore, new discoveries, like nuclear power, also had the potential to destroy human lives, and some even used them for that purpose.

Advances in surgery, medicine and drugs could also bring about dangerous and harmful effects upon people.

And colonial expansion could also mean robbing other people of their resources and reducing them to poverty and slavery.

Indeed, the age of optimism had passed and belief in the inevitability of progress generally shifted to one of gloom and pessimism.

It is this kind of climate that we find ourselves in today and it would seem that we have a situation wherein modern man might look to Gen.3 and discover that The Fall into sin is not such a lot of nonsense after all and that Gen.3 really took place in time and in history.

Still, the Christian church would be naive if she were to think that it will now be an easy thing to convince unbelieving man of God's truth as recorded in the Bible.

For sinful man to discover and understand the truth about himself and the world will always remain a work of the Holy Spirit.

For one thing, the results of the fall of man into sin is his total inability to step out of his sinfulness and to step back into the perfect condition of paradise.

No, paradise is lost for good.

That is why we speak of The Fall.

It was a fall away from God, a fall out of paradise, and a fall into sin and into a bondage to evil and corruption.

One is reminded here of one of the stories of Dr. Paul White, the well-known Jungle Doctor story-teller.  When you hear this particular story aimed at children, then you can easily tell that Paul White is really talking about The Fall of man.

In the story, older monkeys have warned a young monkey not to go near a pool of quicksand, yes, never to go into it.

It is explained to him that if he obeys this simple command, then he has nothing to fear; he will have a happy life and the whole jungle is his to enjoy.

But having the freedom to obey or to disobey this command, the monkey finds himself wondering what would happen if he were to decide to disobey, for as yet he doesn't know what quicksand can do to those who come in it.

He knows what to expect if he decides to keep on obeying – it is the kind of life he is enjoying now, and he knows it is just fine.  But would he know more if he were to try the pool of quicksand?  Would it add to his experience of life?

Perhaps it would give him more power, more insight?

Maybe the others have something that he hasn't got, and therefore want him to stay away from the quicksand.

He can't imagine what it would be and he is really quite happy, having this whole jungle to enjoy.

But if he knew what the others obviously know, then he would be equal to them, he would be as wise and as experienced as they are.  He decides to disobey and steps into the pool of quicksand.

The result is disastrous!

At once he finds himself sinking into the mire of the bog, and the more he moves the deeper he sinks.

The quicksand just seems to su ck him under.

And all at once he realises that the command that was given to him to preserve his life.

The others were not keeping something from him that would, if he experienced it, make him as wise as they.

No, they knew it would harm him and that was the reason for the command.

Had he only kept on obeying!

But now, having disobeyed, he is powerless to do something for himself.

He can't pull himself out, he is stuck, and unless help arrives he faces certain death.

And it would be all his own fault.

He only has himself to blame.

What Dr. Paul White, a former missionary, is doing with this story, is to show of course The Fall of man into sin.

Man need never to have fallen into the bog of sin, had he in Paradise kept on obeying God's command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

We should not think that there was a mystery around this particular tree.

It was a real tree, quite normal like all the other trees.  God had simply singled out this one part of the creation and made it the test of man's obedience to God.

And that of course was the real issue in paradise – man's obedience to God who made him, male and female, and made everything else.

In the making of man, and remember we are not now talking about man as he became after The Fall, but as he was before The Fall, God gave him the ability to choose to obey or to disobey His Creator and Lord.

Man was not put into an unfair situation with this, for this ability to freely choose was not to his disadvantage but to establish a spontaneous and loving relationship between man and God.

If Adam as a human being, had not this freedom of choice, then his relationship to God would have been like that of the animals and the plants.

That would also have been a living relationship, for the whole creation was vibrant with life, but it would have been an automatic one.

But unlike the animals and plants, man, Adam and Eve, were created in the image of God, after His likeness.

God Himself has the ability to think, to chose, to reflect, to know and so on, and this ability God also put within man.

Man was made capable to freely and spontaneously love, think, reflect and know after God.

And if he chose to obey God, then he would continue to glorify God which of course was the whole purpose of God in creating man.

But in order to freely obey God, man was given the possible alternative – to disobey.

And avoiding the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the simple means by which Adam and Eve could continue to give this obedience to God.

The Bible tells us there was also a tree of life which stood in the midst of the garden.

It is not easy to say what the purpose of this particular tree was.  After they had fallen they were prevented from eating from this tree.

The way to life by means of this tree was man cut off to them.

Only much later in the book Revelation are we told that those redeemed in Christ will have access to this tree of life, which is pictured in Revelation in a symbolic way as having full fellowship with God upon the new heaven and earth.

Another matter that sometimes occupies our minds when we think of The Fall is the question of how sin was possible in a world which was altogether good.

We face a mystery here, which we simply cannot fully understand.  Gen.3 tells us of the way in which sin entered and elsewhere the Bible speaks of a rebellion in the spiritual realm of heaven, which appeared to be of the nature of pride and which resulted in Satan and other angels falling from heaven.

And it is the same Satan who in the form of a snake tempts Eve to choose to disobey God.

But as to the actual possibility of sin in a perfect world we do not know why.

But even if someone was able to fully explain that to us, then it would of course make no difference to the present predicament of sin.

Sin and evil have entered and the whole creation has swung into a course quite different from the one that was originally willed by God.

And what we should keep in mind is that the Bible is first of all God's message for a fallen world, and the creation and The Fall are spoken of only to help us understand that the present evil world did not start off that way.

We need to know about the creation and The Fall in order to understand the true character of God and also to understand the direction He is taking us as His redeemed people in Christ.

Imagine for a moment a Bible without the first 3 chapters of Genesis, that is, us not knowing about the creation and fall, knowing nothing about it at all.

It would mean not knowing the nature of good and perfection, neither would we know what salvation through Christ really amounts to; heaven and the new earth would completely baffle us.

We would just find ourselves existing in a world of evil, yes, we would find that we ourselves are an active part of this evil.

Life would have no real meaning, the future could turn out to be anything, things would have meaning only for the present.

In fact, your whole outlook in life would quickly become - let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we might die.  People would all the time try to work out a kind of happiness outside of God.

If you are now thinking that a lot of people live just like that, then you have caught on.

And it happens all the time when people lose sight of the creation and The Fall.

Or they might know about it because they have learned about it in Sunday School or read it in the Bible but they deny that the creation and fall are historical facts.

Truly, to understand this present evil world, to understand the corrupt nature of man, to understand how the holy God stands over against the fallen world and sinful man and what He is doing in Christ, you have just got to go on accepting the creation and The Fall.

The purpose of the Bible, therefore, in its mentioning of the creation and fall, is not so much to provide us with answers about the how and the possibility of sin, and how it would have been, had there been no sin, but its purpose in mentioning the creation and fall is to help us understand the present, our own lives and the nature of this world.

We know then how Satan tempted Eve into disobedience and how Eve got Adam to share in that disobedience.

Gen.3 relates to us the subtle and crafty procedure Satan used in order to ruin God's good creation.

The Fall into sin has left not only humanity, but the whole earth with terrible results.

The creation itself is now in bondage to decay.

Things go rotten and wrong.

The animal world is no longer like it was, it's tooth and claw and the ground is cursed.  There are noxious weeds and insects that harm and destroy.

It is important to realise this because Christ's work of redemption includes bringing the earth back to perfection.

The Bible speaks of the earth also longing to be delivered from its present futility, and of course the redemption of an earth that will be renewed at Christ's second coming, does not make sense unless there is something wrong with the present one.

Mankind too has been thrown into pollution and guilt.

Adam sinned, and the Bible speaks of Adam rather than Eve, even though she was the first to sin, because Adam was the head of the covenant that God had established before The Fall.

That covenant or agreement in paradise had the promise of life if Adam obeyed and the punishment of death if he disobeyed.  Well, when Adam sinned by disobeying, he did that as humanity's representative.

Adam stood at the head of the whole human race, he was the first man.

What he would do, the way he would turn, would naturally affect all those to come from him.

Therefore when Adam sinned, we all sinned, everybody sinned.  Adam's sin had the result of polluting the whole of humanity.  And as he stood guilty before God so also all of humanity in him.

Remember that we earlier on spoke of a fall into sin, into corruption, away from God.

That fall affected everyone, for Adam and Eve and all those after them had children who came into existence with a fallen human nature.  Hence the psalmist could say, "In iniquity I was brought forth, in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Ps.51:5)

Not that the act of procreation and of conceiving are wrong in themselves, we know that in marriage they are not, but the psalmist was simply expressing the fact that as his parents were part of fallen humanity, so was he by being born of them.

And not only do we find ourselves sinful from birth, but we also stand guilty before God.

Not guilt as a mere feeling, but guilt as an actual fact.  Every one shares in that fallen humanity which as a whole stands guilty before God.

It means of course that everyone deserves God's judgment upon sin.  Besides, it is not as though humanity has sinned once in paradise, and then no more.

As we well know from experience, our original sin with which we are born, is the fountain of all actual sin.

Everyday man adds to his sin and we all are actually increasing our guilt before God.

The picture we have then of man is not good.  The state he is in is not good.

Man's original sin causes him to be polluted in mind and body and he stands guilty.  Original sin is the actual cause of all other sins.  And all that together makes man totally depraved.

Man's human nature is inclined to all manner of evil and wickedness.  That not everyone actually commits every possible sin is not due to some spiritual good in us, for there is none.

The good that we still find in people is because the evil in his heart or nature, doesn't always come to the surface.

The reason for this is easy to explain – the laws of society, the fear of God's judgement, the concern for the wellbeing of others, these all keep man in check.

They are God's ways of preventing man from completely destroying himself and others, physically and mentally.

It is a favour to all, or a common grace of God to mankind, to make life in many ways still possible.

But the potential to be evil is there in everyone, and we know of course that it comes out, sometimes worse than at other times, and more in some than in others.

But in the light of The Fall, we can now understand why the Bible describes the nature of man as being evil, disobedient, wicked and perverse.

It is all there, right within us, in our hearts and minds.

It is in essence a form of death.

Adam and Eve were told that if they disobeyed God, they would die.

And die they did.  Not physically straight away, although that of course came later, but spiritually.

No longer could they have that beautiful fellowship with God.

It was broken, for they had now fallen into sin, whilst God remained sinless.

That separation is spiritual death.

Into that separation everyone is born, which means that also children of believers, and heirs of the covenant promises, are spiritually dead to God as soon as they are physically alive.

And if a person all through his life remains spiritually dead to God, then when physical death occurs, he ends up being eternally dead as well.

That means without hope for ever, always and always separated from God in everlasting darkness.

By nature then, everyone is dead in trespasses and sin and we are children of wrath.

Not children of God anymore as in paradise, but now children of His wrath and judgement and wholly incapable of returning to God.

But the one thing you must now do is to remember that the fallen man we have looked at in quite some detail is not the whole story.

It's quite possible that you are a bit unhappy about all that time we spent on telling you about the fall and its consequences.

For you know that God's Word is really about salvation and therefore you may feel that things today were a bit out of proportion, somewhat out of balance.

If you are thinking that, then in a way you are quite right.

It's true, there is also the other side of the coin, the rest of the story.

It’s about Christ who has come to save people from their sins.

That is the glorious part of the story, and by far the best part.

And we need to hear it much and often.

And I am sure that the preaching in this church does emphasize Christ a tremendous lot.

But, every now and then, we have to go back to the fall of man because it is then that we see again so clearly why we need Christ and why we can be so thankful and so filled by joy that we have a Saviour.

That monkey in that story of Paul White was pulled out of the quicksand.  The older and wiser monkeys rescued him, but I have a feeling that sometimes that monkey walked by the bog, just to remind himself how lucky he was to be alive and well.

Well, today we looked at The Fall in order to appreciate again the blessings of being saved.

AMEN.