FACING THE BROKEN IMAGE
Genesis 3.1-11
What do you see when you look in the mirror? One of the most remarkable things about people is how little insight they have to themselves. We are often able to see flaws in other people that we are blind to in ourselves. We are often able to have insight into people’s behaviours and yet be totally unaware of our own behaviour. This morning I want for us, with the help of God’s Word, to take an honest look at ourselves. To see ourselves as we really are according to God’s Word. Not to see ourselves as the world sees us, nor as we may see ourselves but whom we truly are in light of God’s Word. Turn with me to the book of Genesis.
Let us look first of all at Genesis 1.26-28, this is the lesson I was to preach on last Sunday morning but changed. This passage tells us that we are made, created by God, in His image. I want to take a moment this morning and make sure that we all understand this text because it is the first thing that Scripture, God’s Word, teaches us about mankind. I want you to look closely at verse 26. Man is made in the image of God and it is a personal act. The rest of creation God said “Let there be…” but of the creation of man (male and female) God said “Let us make man in our image…” The rest of creation is impersonal whereas the creation of man is personal. I want you to also notice that man is not made after his own likeness, like the rest of creation, but is made in the image of God. The creation of man is specifically noted as ‘male and female.’ For the rest of creation gender was not important, it had no significance but for mankind it had and it does. These things point to the fact that man is distinct, different, and separate from and special from the rest of God’s creation and created order.
Turn now to verse 27 – I want you to listen carefully as I read the verse to you. Did you catch it? The plurality of God – “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” and we read that man is made in his plurality – “male and female…” Why is this important? It is important because fundamentally and foundationally the image of God in man is reflected in the plurality of relationship – between man and woman. God is Trinitarian, in an eternal relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit and this eternal relationship is reflected in the fact that man is created not as a single identity but as male and female who ‘fit’ together in relationship.
We can look at other aspects of mankind to speak of the ‘image of God’ – creative ability, moral understanding, and the ability to reason but the foundational, the fundamental reflection of the image of God is relational. We were, and are, created for relationship, first and foremost for a relationship with God and then with one another. Hence when we come to the NT and look at Christ, who is fully God and fully man, we clearly see the image of God in man because of a life lived in sinless union (or relationship) with the Father.
If you go into any bookshop, or even newsagents, there are a myriad of books telling you how to improve your self-image. The fashion industry continually bombards us with images of ‘perfect bodies’ and we conveniently forget the work of the ‘airbrush’ by the photographer. The growth in cosmetic surgery is frightening. Turn on the ‘religious channels’ and very few of them have not had cosmetic surgery. We are so obsessed with the physical and yet look around you the relational, the area in which we fundamentally reflect the image of God, is disintegrating and being destroyed. Why? Well turn with me now to Genesis 3 and we will find out why this image of God is ‘broken’ or ‘marred’ today.
I don’t know if you have ever shattered a mirror or if you have ever had to look at yourself in a mirror which had been cracked. The mirror reflects something of the image but it is distorted and try as you might you cannot see the full reflection in the thousands of pieces. The image is there but it is distorted, broken and shattered. It is hard to see things whole in a mirror that has been shattered into a thousand pieces. Genesis 3 tells us how the world seen through the broken glass of the fall of man is no longer the normal world. Everything is ambiguous and nothing is ‘very good’ any more.
Verses 1-5
By some inscrutable providence, the voice of temptation comes to Eve, outside of herself, but from within creation. The snake enters creation and specifically the Garden of Eden, the garden of God. The snake is symbolic of the devil, hence Revelation speaks of he devil as ‘that ancient serpent’ (Rev. 20.2). Satan does not appear as a demon to the woman and the voice of temptation does not come as that of evil. Please remember that. Scripture warns us that Satan often comes masquerading as an angel of light. Evil has an amazing capacity to be attractive and seductive. Satan and the worship of things satanic are not just for fairy tales or the occult. Many a home in this parish has tarot cards, ouija boards and other occult paraphernalia. They are not innocent toys, they are doorways for the demonic to come into your life and that of your family. As C S Lewis once said there are two grave dangers with the devil – one is to give him too much credence and the second is to ignore him altogether. But let us come back to Genesis 3. Satan comes to Eve in the ordinariness of everyday life in the Garden of Eden. There was nothing about his appearance that made her turn away from him. She suspected no danger and so no cause for alarm. How many have found out too late that Satan was wearing a mask when the voice of temptation spoke for the first time. It is like the temptress in Beowulf who comes up out of the water and promises riches and power and her beauty beguiles but the consequences are ‘grandel’ who terrorises the life of the king and subsequently Beowulf is taken in by the beauty of the temptation.
Let us look for a moment at the anatomy of temptation. The conversation seems totally innocent and harmless. Look at verse 1. The serpent does not deny the goodness of God outright. Instead he sows a seed of mistrust into the mind and heart of Eve. He takes the command of God – which was a positive (Genesis 2.16-17)
and he has twisted it to a negative. The subtle thing is it almost sounds like the truth. It almost sounds like God’s word but it is not. You see the outright lies we can easily detect but the ones that are dressed like the truth or have a grain of truth within those we often fail to spot. Can’t you hear the little seeds of doubt? “God really cannot be that mean? Does He not care for us? He knows we need food and this is pleasing to my eyes and it is good for food.” All these seeds are planted by the first statement of the serpent. Eve responds in verses 2 and 3. She begins by speaking the truth of what God has said but then she goes further and she adds to the command of God. She tells the serpent they are not even to ‘touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’ Yet God had not said anything about touching it. How easy it is for us to add to the Word of God. How often the Christian people have been led away from the truth and into sin because someone, often within the church, added to the Word of God.
Now here comes the denial of God’s Word – verses 4 and 5. Surely nothing as trivial as a piece of fruit could lead to such a thing as death? Temptation begins with trivia. Sin begins with trivia. Remember that in your lives. Surely the whole world will not fall apart because of a piece of forbidden fruit? You will not die and what is more it is because God does not want you to be like Him that He denies this fruit to you. But the truth was they were made in the image of God. They were as like their Creator as it was possible for anything created to be like the Creator. It was not to prevent them from being like God that the command was given but to preserve the image of God, the likeness of God in them that God gave the command. The serpent has denied the consequence of their disobedience and denied that they are made in the image of God. The serpent has pushed her just a little further down the road to disobedience and sin by questioning the certainty of sin and the good intentions of God towards His creatures.
That is a subtle thing in Genesis 3, but you know what I find even more striking – Eve believed it and so do we today. We believe the lie of temptation which says ‘there will be no death when you disobey the command of God.’ We believe the lie of temptation that says ‘you will be like God when you do this.’ Wherever and whenever a man touches sin there is death. ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6.23 – ‘but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’). You see God has made man that when man is ‘alive’ in sin he is ‘dead’ to God. Let me read Ephesians 2.1 to you – ‘And you he made alive, who were dead in your trespasses and sins…’ It is the denial of the consequences of disobedience to God’s Word that is at the heart of the temptation here.
In Erik Erikson’s model of growth of personal identity in a child, the most basic and most critical phase of childhood development is that in which the child experiences (or fails to experience) ‘basic trust.’ Basic mistrust is the tap root of all the disorders through all the other phases of emotional and relational development. That is certainly the picture here with Eve. The Tempter moves from casting doubt on God’s trustworthiness (did God really say…?) to casting doubt on the truth of His word (you will not surely die…). This breaking down of trust is at the heart of all the disorders which follow in the book of Genesis (Cain killing Abel; Tower of Babel etc).
So what follows from this subtle dialogue between Eve and the Tempter? We move from Obedience to Rebellion and from Openness to Shame. Well in verse 6 we see that Eve’s emotions are stirred (pleasing to the eye) and her intellect appealed to (able to make you wise) Eve is moved to sin. We seem to race through a whole scale of emotions here. The coarse sensuality ‘good for food’, the aesthetic pleasure in a ‘delight to the eyes’, the intellectual enticement ‘was to be desired to make one wise.’ These all find a parallel in 1 John 2.16 ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.’ She is moved to break the relationship with God and to seek knowledge apart from God’s Word. So Eve sees, takes, eats and she gives it to Adam. The last time we read ‘saw that it was good’ it was God looking at His creation, now Eve has usurped God’s place and ‘she is the one looking and seeing it good.’ The last time it was God taking Adam and the rib and giving him Eve, now it is Eve who is taking and giving to the man. Eve is usurping God’s place in the created order but is that not what all sin does in our lives. We take the place of God. We rule where God should rule. The one who has been led astray leads Adam astray. He becomes associated with her in her sin and in fact his is the last and decisive act of disobedience. You see one of the simplest paths from temptation to sin is the path of instant gratification. She saw…she took…she ate. The delaying of instant gratification, the stepping back and reflecting on God’s Word and bringing our desires into line with His word prevents the falling into sin. Yet we seek instant gratification of our desires and fall into sin so easily. The way of sin puts instant gratification in front of possible consequences. The way of sin sets our ideas of what is good for us over and above what God, in His Word, has said is good for us.
The consequences are all too quickly apparent – verse 7 – immediate shame – that sense of unease with yourself at the very core of your being. Friends, let me say to you as humbly as I can, you know a man is far gone in his sin when he has no shame about what he has done. Adam and Eve know immediate shame at their disobedience. Your conscience is hardened and when you read Romans 1 you realise how far gone we are in our sin when we will openly boast about our sin – just look at the media around you and the world in which we live today. Man knows no shame for his sin today and the saddest truth of all that is present in the church also.
Well in the very next few verses we have the encounter between God and man now that sin has entered the world. Verse 8 – there is intimacy pictured here and yet it is of a lost intimacy. God comes walking in the Garden of Eden, to meet with man but this evening things are different, forever different. Adam and Eve do not run to God this evening instead they hide from God. The trees which were to be the symbol of their obedience and a means of God’s blessing are now used to hide their shame and guilt from before God. In verse 9 it is God who calls Adam. God is not asking a physical, geographical question here but is asking a spiritual question. He is asking Adam where he is spiritually now that he has disobeyed God’s Word and eaten of the tree of knowledge. There is now a barrier of sin between them, physically represented in the distance between them and the hiding in the trees. Please note it is God who calls Adam. It is God who speaks the first words in reconciliation by calling Adam by name, just as He calls each of us by name. Adam comes before God (verse 10) and confesses that he was ashamed because he was naked before God. Friends I want you to note that this morning. When you come to stand before God and come into the presence of His purity, His holiness naked you will feel and ashamed that all of your life is exposed and laid bare before Him. There is nothing hidden from God. As the author to the Hebrews warns us … Adam stands physically, emotionally, relationally and spiritually naked before God. His awareness of his nakedness is much more than the physical. Yet we see the tenderness of God towards him in verse 11. God in his questioning is leading Adam to a confession of his sin. You know the rest of the story how Adam and Eve pass the blame from one to the other and then to the serpent and how God curses all three of them for their sinfulness. Adam admits his disobedience but there is no confession, he implies rather in the subsequent dialogue that God is to blame. “You should not have put me in a position where I could disobey; I don’t deny I did wrong but remember the extenuating circumstances.’ You should not be so stern and holy.” You would not believe how often we say that or how often I have heard just such an argument from someone whose sin has been exposed. Yet we see also the graciousness of God in preventing Adam and Eve eating of the tree of eternal life at this moment. If they had been able to partake of the tree of eternal life they would have been eternal in their sinfulness and there would have been no way back from their fallen state. One day another tree of life would stand on a hill and provide atonement for their sin so that man would no longer need to hide from God or feel naked and ashamed in His presence.
Conclusion
This may all have been very familiar to you this morning and may even have been a bit basic for you. Yet if we do not have the basic building blocks in place then we will never construct the house of faith correctly. Let me draw this sermon to a conclusion by putting some practical flesh on to these bones.
You are made in the image of God. That is the starting block of any healthy self-esteem and can I say there are many of you here this morning and you need to hear that and believe that this morning. There are many of you and you need to remind your children of that every day. There are some of you and you need to take that on board in how you relate to other people, especially other members of your own family. Remember the image of God is seen primarily in relationship because God is relational in the Trinity, the Godhead.
Secondly we need to grasp again the fact that the image of God is marred by sin. The mirror has been shattered into thousands of pieces by man’s disobedience and sinfulness. As we read in I Corinthians 15.21-22 we all have sinned and we all experience death because of the Fall of Adam. We must have a right understanding and balance of being made in the image of God and of our fallen sinful humanity.
Thirdly, I want us to take on board this morning the subtle nature of temptation that leads to sin and the breaking of our relationship with God and one another. That is why the Lord’s Prayer says ‘Lead us not into temptation…’ You see ‘once we are near the tree our pulse begins to stir, curiosity flares up and passions are aroused. In such a situation our ability to make decisions is paralysed.’ Remember that when temptations voice comes to you in the ordinary everyday situations of life. This sirens voice, attractive as it is, promising pleasure with no consequences, will lead to disaster and the breaking of your relationship with God and with those closest to you. You see the truth is those who do not know you and do not love you are not truly affected by your sin but those who know you and love you are devastated by your sin.
Finally I want us to listen again to those words spoken by Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Romans 6.23 – read. Praise God that we read Genesis 3 through the eyes of the NT and from the perspective of Christ crucified and risen from the dead. There is a way back to God for all whom He calls by name. This morning you may be hiding behind the ‘trees’ of your life but God calls you by name to come back to Him. Amen.
