Chapter 1: What does the curse of God signify in the context of Adam and Eve's disobedience?
It's a malediction when God condemns people to be separated from Him, sent into the outer darkness to experience the complete loss of the benefits of His nearness. This is a powerful term, this curse, that has radical consequences. And we see after the initial fall that God pronounces His curse upon the man, upon the woman and upon the serpent.
What happened when Adam sinned? What was the curse that R.C. Sproul just mentioned? His curse upon Adam, Eve, and the serpent. This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and I'm glad you're joining us today. No one likes hearing bad news. But when we understand the bad news, the curse of God, the good news shines as the amazing grace that it truly is.
Today's message is the final one you'll hear from Dr. Sproul's series, The Promise Keeper. So be sure to request access to all 14 messages and a copy of the companion book when you donate before midnight tonight at renewingyourmind.org. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on the serpent's temptation and the curse of God.
We have been looking at the covenant of creation, or sometimes called the Adamic covenant, or elsewise we refer to it as the covenant of works, wherein Adam and Eve were placed on probation in the Garden of Eden, and in our last session we were going through some of the critical elements that make up the narrative of the Adamic covenant.
We looked at the tree of life as the principle of the highest potency of life, and we looked at the principle of probation in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And again, let me just comment on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because there is so much confusion and disagreement referring back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Why was it called the knowledge of good and evil? The standard reply to that is that people say, well, Adam and Eve didn't have any experiential sense of the difference between right and wrong until they experienced the shame that came from their sin. And so the idea was that the knowledge of good and evil would be that knowledge that would come only through sinning.
However, Adam and Eve were created as moral creatures and were called to have an ability to discern between right and wrong. And God, as our Creator, certainly knows the difference between right and wrong, even though He doesn't have to experience evil to understand that it is evil. And so the idea here is not that we have a tree here
that will only reap a certain benefit if somebody disobeys the commandment. Remember, the idea is that that tree of knowledge and good and evil, which is off limits, could also have a positive benefit associated with it. And again, the Bible doesn't explain to us exactly why
It was called the knowledge of good and evil, but I think we get a hint to it by virtue of the other element that we encounter in the garden, and that is the serpent who comes as the tempter to our primordial parents. And now you remember how Satan lays his snare to seduce Eve and consequently also Adam. We remember that chapter 3 of Genesis begins with words that are ominous.
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Chapter 2: How does R.C. Sproul explain the concept of the covenant of creation?
If He put one restriction on you, the only thing you're going to be looking at all day long is the restricted area. He's going to create a desire in you for walking over the borders by the very fact that He put those borders there, so He's really taken away your freedom.
And so the serpent comes with the temptation, and he begins with this subtle attack, but then he switches quickly from the subtle suggestion to a frontal attack, clearly contradicting what God had said. God had said to Adam and Eve, the day that you shall eat of this tree, you shall surely die. And the serpent says, you will not die, but you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.
The temptation, the seduction is that man can be elevated to the very highest possible level of reality, to the level of God Himself, to know good and evil as God knows good and evil, presumably to establish the standards of good and evil, presumably to decree what is good, to do what is right in your own eyes, which is for the creature
the very essence of sin, to do what is right in your own eyes. And so we see that in the fall, the thing that destroys this covenantal foundation of our relationship to God is the human quest or grasp, I should say, for autonomy. The promise that is held out by Satan is deification.
And when they fall into this trap and are seduced by the serpent, then of course the covenant of works or the covenant of creation ends in complete disaster because the probation, you recall, carries with it that fourth element, that punitive element, the promise of impending death to all who
Now, I think it's important for us to understand that God set forth as the consequence of disobedience to this covenant not simply death at some point, but the point was the day that you shall eat of it, you shall surely die. Let me say that again. the punishment for breaking the probation of the covenant of creation is not just death, but immediate death.
Now what do we do about that since God doesn't follow through with His warning? Some people say, the very moment that Adam and Eve violated the terms of the covenant, they did suffer death that day. They suffered spiritual death from which they could only be resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, that's true that they suffered spiritual death that day.
But I think that more than that is in view in the warning and in the consequence. The idea that sinning against God would bring death carries with it the idea of the physical dissolution of the body. Thanatoth, biological death, the death that we understand attends every mortal person. The fact that Adam and Eve are not killed by God on the day that they sinned does not make God a liar.
It simply makes Him gracious that He allows Adam and Eve, who are now spiritually dead, to continue to be alive biologically by postponing their execution. He provides for them redemption.
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Chapter 3: Why is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil significant?
the first gospel. And the irony is that the first promise of the gospel comes in the middle of a curse. And the first promise of the gospel comes while God is placing His curse on the serpent. who will crawl on his belly. And this, of course, anticipates the defeat of the serpent by the Christ who must suffer and die as he vanquishes the one who seduces Adam and Eve.
Now the one other thing that I think is important here that we understand that along with these curses and we have this first promise of redemption, the first act of redemption comes also at this time when, if you recall, the immediate response of Adam and Eve to their transgression, to their sin, was an awareness and a shame connected with their nakedness.
We were told, you know, at the end of chapter 2 that they were both naked and unashamed, but when they sinned, they suddenly became aware of their nakedness and went and sought refuge by hiding in the trees. Desmond Morris, who wrote a bestselling book several decades ago called The Naked Ape,
looking at mankind not as something specially created in the image of God, but as just one more animal in the animal kingdom, said there are 80-some different subspecies or species of primates in the world, and he included humans as one of those forms of the primates, and he titled his book accordingly, The Naked Ape.
and made a big deal out of the reality of all of the monkeys and gorillas and apes and primates in the world. Only one of them, in fact only one animal in the whole animal kingdom, produces artificial coverings to use as clothes. Again, looking at us as an animal, said, we're the only animal that has a garment industry.
Everybody else wears the clothes that the Creator gave to them, and that the rest of the apes are naked, but we can't stand to be naked, really. although there's still a sense in which the marriage context is a place where God has still reserved for people to be naked and unashamed once it's cloaked in commitment and promise and so on.
Everywhere else, for the most part, people are normally afraid to be exposed physically to the watching world. And so we have this original human embarrassment and shame about being naked. And the very first act of redemption is that God stoops down and personally makes garments to cover the nakedness of His sinful creatures.
See, we're beginning to see already the covenant of grace starting to unfold here, that where we failed in obedience to the law of God, God nevertheless does not just annihilate Adam and Eve. He gives them a promise of future redemption, and He covers their nakedness, which again foreshadows the ultimate covering of our nakedness that comes from the garments of the righteousness of Christ.
If you'd like to know more about the ultimate covering that comes from the garments of the righteousness of Christ, make sure you visit renewingyourmind.org to get a free e-book from R.C. Sproul titled, What is the Gospel? Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind. This week, R.C.
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