Sermon Sketches #5 - Exile and Homecoming  

Justin RuddyOctober 13, 2011 

We continue in our Sermon Sketches series which today follows Stephen Um into his new sermon series: Encountering God. The series will track through the Old Testament, keying in on important characters and episodes where people encounter God. Throughout, attention is given to both the micro context of each text, as well as the macro context of how the texts fit into the larger "one-story-plotline" of the Bible. This week's sermon was taken from Genesis 3: 

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Encountering God:

Exile and Homecoming 

Genesis 3:1-24

• Introduction 
  • Up to this point in the Scriptures, Adam and Eve have had only one counselor speaking into their lives: God 
  • Human beings are "revelation receivers," and at this point in the narrative another counselor enters the picture 
  • The serpent is working with the same facts but interprets them differently in an attempt to woo Adam and Eve. 
• The Reason for the Fall 
  • If anyone is to be considered more accountable for the Fall, it would be Adam 
    • He is the the federal representative of all humanity, and the one who received the initial command. 
  • At the heart of the Fall is a deep rooted suspicion of God 
    • We ultimately want to reign our own lives.
  • There is a creational order that the Fall turns upside-down.
    • We were originally intended to worship God and rule over creation. With the Fall this is twisted: humanity now worships and is ruled by creation. 
    • Choice itself because a means of binding enslavement (Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice). 
  • The human heart was the target of the serpent's attack. 
    • The word play between naked (v.25) and crafty (v.23) in the original language bears this out. 
    • Eve was both the first moral conformist and self-liberator:
      • By adding requirements to God's original command she makes him stingier and stricter. 
        • Though God is a God of abundance, Eve adds "touch" (v.3) as a new restrictive requirement. 
      • By dropping the covenantal name of God (Yahweh) and lessening the intensity of punishment she makes him softer. 
  • We are all looking for life-sustaining functionality, but often times would rather engage in attempts at self-salvation to attain it. 
• The Result of the Fall 
  • Breakdown on every front is what comes as a result of the Fall:
    • Psychological (v.7a)
    • Horizontal/Relational - our relationships to one another (v.7b, 15)
    • Vertical/Theological - our relationship to God (v.8, 10)
    • Creational - our relationship to the created order itself (v.17)
    • Vocational - our relationship to work (v.19) 
  • When God was no longer at the center of humanity's life, the result was chaos. 
  • When God is placed at the center, the result is harmony. 
• The Remedy (or Reversal) of the Fall 
  • There are a number of important gospel themes that run through this text: 
    • v.15 - the overcoming of death 
    • v. 21 - the covering of shame 
    • v. 23 - the implied longing for homecoming that results from exile 
  • Pulling the thread in v.21, we are forced to ask, "How will our shame be covered?"
    • Shame is not the same as guilt, it references something external, the way others perceive us. 
    • The death of the animal in v.21 introduces the concept that death is important in providing life. 
    • When we trace this through the scriptures, we find that there is an ultimate Lamb who comes to die, and in doing so covers our shame with his righteousness. 
  • Following v.23, "How will we get back home?" 
    • We have been shut out of paradise and we cannot go through the flaming swords on our own. 
    • The only way to be brought back home is for an ultimate insider to come outside, to absorb our "outsider-ness," and go through the flaming swords on our behalf, that we might be made insiders. 
    • Christ does this for us. As the Second Adam, he fulfills all that the first Adam failed to do. 
    • Through him we are welcomed back home, given a new center, and even a new perspective on the law itself. 
  • Jesus is the one who provides us access, a way to get back home. 

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