“20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. ”
I want you to imagine an attentive father of five little children. He makes it his business to love each of them in the ways they receive love best. He works on little projects with one. He makes it a point to regularly affirm another. He picks up little gifts for them all just for the fun of it. His children grow up knowing that they are loved. There is a war. The man is in the reserves and has to go abroad for two years, maybe more.
Now imagine that his children primarily miss his expressions of love. They don’t really miss him; they miss the presents; they miss the projects; if they still had the presents and the projects and the expressions of love without him, they firmly believe they would be just as happy as they were before he left.
Now ask yourself -would you be fine with God’s expressions of love in Eden—the freedom from want and pain, the harmonious relationships, the bliss of existence as it ought to be—without God? Could you be happy with everything else in your life being the way it should be without reentering the presence of God? “Only in the presence of God did man enjoy fullness of life. To choose anything else it to choose death,” writes Gordon Wenham. “The expulsion from the garden of delight where God Himself lived would therefore have been regarded by the godly men or ancient Israel as yet more catastrophic than physical death.” Do you see it that way? Do you see the presence of God as essential and your distance from Him to be what’s most wrong with your life? That’s the question of this sermon: do you see the presence of God as essential and your distance from Him to be what’s most wrong with your life?
We will study this in three points. First: Adam and Eve. Second: the emperor’s new, new clothes. Third: banished from the tree of life. We will study Adam and Eve in verse 20, the emperor’s new, new clothes in verse 21, and what it meant for Adam and Eve to be banished from Eden in verses 22-24.
First: Adam and Eve. To this point in this account Adam has been abdicating his responsibility. He was commanded to care for the garden, and he tolerated the serpent’s presence. He was the leader of his family and he stood idly by while his wife was tempted by Satan.
We men would do well to listen because abdication of responsibility in the family, in the community, and in the church is one of our besetting sins. If, as a man, aspiring to leadership in the church sounds bizarre to you, it is just a sign of how deep this abdication of responsibility goes.
Now we see Adam embrace his responsibility; verse 20, “Adam named his wife Eve.” Adam had named all the animals. In chapter 2 we read, “[God] brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” Now he named his wife Eve “because,” as verse 20 tells us, “she would become the mother of all the living.”
The Hebrew for “Eve” sounds like the Hebrew word for “living.” The Greek of this name is a familiar name too: Zoey. Adam named his wife after life because God had promised that life would come through his wife. He didn’t give her a name that had to do with being deceived because she was deceived. He didn’t give his wife a name that had to do with sin because she sinned. He gave her a name that had to do with life because God had promised that she would be the mother of the living. That’s an act of love. That’s a proper embracing of his responsibility as her husband.
It’s worth nothing that this use of Eve’s name and its meaning comes shortly after a use of Adam’s name with a meaning. Adam’s name sounds like the Hebrew for “ground” as in “by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.” Adam knows that there is something more than death for his sin; he knows that there will be life because of the promise of God and so he names his wife “living.” Adam was living by hope in the promises. If you don’t have any hope, it’s worth considering the role of God’s promises in your life; they offer hope.
Adam named his wife well because she was, in fact, the mother of the living. You see that in the billions of people alive today. You see that most clearly in Christ. He is the child promised to Eve who would crush the serpent’s head as seen in verse 15. He is the child who brings life out of death.
Please pull up the first picture.
Here you see the mother of the living with the mother of the child who gives life. Eve’s got her hand on the baby that will give life, and Mary’s got her hand on Eve’s face to say, “it’s okay. God is doing what he promised.”
Adam and Eve had chosen death. “Only in the presence of God did man enjoy fullness of life. To choose anything else it to choose death.” God used childbearing to bring people back into His presence. That’s Jesus. “In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.”
Now we see God deal with His people’s shame. That’s our second point: the emperor’s new, new clothes. Adam and Eve had tried to cover up their shame using palm leaves. When they heard the voice of God it became clear to them that these did nothing. Now, in act of grace, God made them new clothes; verse 21, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
These garments were far more substantial than the palm leaf loincloths which Adam and Eve had made for themselves. What we have here is a tunic—a long shirt that reaches down to the knees or ankles. Since we are told these garments were made out of skin, children’s Bible stories tend to portray these garments as almost pre-historic—as if Adam suddenly became a caveman or some such peculiarity. These skin tunics are not about appearance. This same word for “tunic” was used to describe the garments worn by the priests who were always to appear clothed in the tabernacle and temple lest their private parts be exposed as Exodus 20:26 puts it. Those priestly garments covered the priests’ shame before God just as these garments covered Adam and Eve’s shame before God.
The word used here for “skin”—“garments of skin”—was used by Moses to describe materials for the tabernacle. The tabernacle shielded the sinful people from the glory of the holy God. The tabernacle made it possible for sinful people to stand veiled in the presence of a holy God without being destroyed. Adam and Eve’s garments served the same purpose. Moses wrote Genesis with Leviticus in mind. Because of their sin, the Israelites could only stand before God by way of a covering or a veil God chose. They could no longer stand before Him without that covering. Adam and Eve could no longer stand before God naked. They needed to be veiled. Their shame needed to be covered.
We too need to be veiled to stand before a holy God. Christ is our clothing. He is the garment which covers our shame. The apostles saw that. Galatians 3:27, “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Adam and Eve tried to cover their shame themselves with palm leaves. We try to cover our shame with good works or enviable accomplishments. We all need the covering God supplies and only the covering God supplies.
This covering requires death. An animal had to die to fashion this garment to cover Adam and Eve’s sin and shame. Christ had to die cover our sin and shame. There is no covering without blood. There is no gospel without blood.
To be covered by this bloody sacrifice, you must expose your sin and shame to God. Adam and Eve needed to throw off their palm leaves and stand naked to be dressed by God. You need to throw of your self-justifications and uncover your sin and shame to be dressed by God. “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress, helpless, look to thee for grace: foul, I to the fountain fly wash me, savior, or I die.” If you don’t sense the truth of that hymn, I beg you to consider the very real possibility that you aren’t clothed with Christ at all, which means that your sin and shame still define you.
You need to be clothed in Christ because you need to be able to stand in the presence of God. That is what you need more than you will ever realize. “Only in the presence of God did man enjoy fullness of life. To choose anything else it to choose death.” Don’t choose that. Be clothed in Christ and if you are clothed in Christ, recognize that it is finished; you can’t be better clothed than you already are.
God made these garments as an act of grace; they were an undeserved gift. They were also a preparation for what lay ahead; we see that grace precedes judgment; we see that in our final point: banished from the tree of life. These verses are all about God’s doings. Humanity is passive here. God is active. Adam and Eve have no more say in these decisions than they did in their creation. The banishment from Eden teaches you the same lesson as the creation of humanity—God is God and we are not. That, of course, is the lesson that Adam and Eve forgot when they ate from the tree; that is the lesson which we forget in a dozen different ways every single day before dinner.
Humanity has tried to become something we were never meant to be; we’ve tried to become the arbiters of good and evil; verse 22, ‘the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”’ We are still trying to play the judge by our own wisdom; just log on to Facebook. Just pay attention to politics. Just visit any high school in America.
Adam and Eve wanted to be like God in ways they were never meant to be and so they lost their godliness, their Godlikeness. That’s how sin works. It promised Godlikeness and you forfeit godliness.
Now that Adam and Eve had sinned, they had become sinners, and they would keep sinning until this sin brought its logical consequence, which is death. Drowning eventually results in death. Sinning eventually results in death. Remember, “only in the presence of God did man enjoy fullness of life. To choose anything else it to choose death.” This is why we read in verse 22, “he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”
Don’t read this in terms of magic—as if there were something magical in the fruit itself like Indiana Jones and the holy grail. The fruit of the tree of life is just a sign, and now what is signified—eternal life—is taken away. It’s just a sign but obedience to the command regarding that sign matters because disobedience is death; sin is death. This is the fulfillment of God’s promise, “on the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” Adam began dying the day he was exiled from Eden and there was nothing he could do to stop the process. Even if he could, would he want to? Remember, “The expulsion from the garden of delight where God Himself lived would… have been regarded by the godly men or ancient Israel as yet more catastrophic than physical death.” Why would people want to live forever in shame? Why would people want to live forever in sin?
You need to ask yourself if you want to live this way forever in sin and shame or if you want God’s presence even more than you want this life.
Adam and Eve were not only denied the tree of life, they were also driven out of the land—out of the garden. That’s another reason for the new clothing. This same word for “driven out” here is used for the Canaanites being driven out of the Promised Land and for Hagar and Ishmael being driven out of the Promised Land. Sin brings expulsion from the Promised Land. That’s the story of the rest of the Old Testament with Israel and the land. It’s all here. The land is life and to be separated from it is death. You need to be killing your sin or your sin will kill you, as John Owen put it; it will separate you from the land. It will separate you from God. It will separate you from life.
Adam and Eve could not re-enter the land. They couldn’t return to the garden; verse 24, “After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
The angel stood guard at the east side of Eden. Why the east? Well, the entrance to the tabernacle was on the east side. The entrance to the temple was on the east. The tabernacle and temple were the new garden. They were the decorated with images of Eden. They housed the presence of God.
The tabernacle and the temple were God’s way of inviting His people back into His presence. At Eden, the cherubim stood guard. They did in the tabernacle and temple too. The cherubim stood above the ark of the covenant. Please bring up the slide.
Those angels’ wings stood guard above the mercy seat, which was the exact place where God’s presence manifested itself with His people.
So how could the people draw near to God at the mercy seat, which is another way of saying how could the people draw near to God given that this flaming sword was flashing back and forth? Blood. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest splattered blood on the mercy seat. He brought the life of blood into the presence of God—life that was bought by death.
That’s how you draw near too. As Paul told the Romans, “God presented Christ as a [mercy seat], through the shedding of his blood.” We come with Christ’s life poured out to death—his blood. He is the new mercy seat. He is the gateway to the new Eden. “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.” Christ is the new meeting place of God and humanity. He takes us back to the tree of life.
That’s why we Christians talk so much about Jesus. It isn’t because we are repetitious. It is because it’s all wrapped up in him. He is life because he takes us into the presence of God. He is God. “Only in the presence of God did man enjoy fullness of life. To choose anything else it to choose death. The expulsion from the garden of delight where God Himself lived would therefore have been regarded by the godly men or ancient Israel as yet more catastrophic than physical death.”
The question for you is do you want this presence, or do you honestly want Eden without God? Do you want paradise without Christ? Those who want Eden without God get nothing. Those who want God, get God and Eden. It can be no other way. It can be no other way for you. Amen.