East of Eden | Genesis 3:20-24
Brian Hedges | June 19, 2016
Well, good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis, the third chapter.
Jonathan Edwards, that great New England Puritan theologian, preached a sermon once on Genesis 3:24; it was called East of Eden. And he said that Genesis 3 is the most sorrowful and melancholy chapter we have in the whole Bible. [Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 17: Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 331.]
You think, “Oh, boy. . .this sermon is going to be wonderful! We’re going to look at the most sorrowful, melancholy chapter in the whole Bible!” And yet, we don’t fully understand the joy of the good news of the gospel until we reckon with the bad news of Genesis 3.
We’ve been studying Genesis 3 together for the last couple of weeks, as we’ve looked at the original temptation and fall into sin (in the first part of that chapter), and then the dreadful consequences of the fall, and the oracles of God’s judgment upon this first couple (whom we saw last week).
Today we come to the end of this tragic chapter, as we look at the man and woman’s expulsion from the garden in Genesis 3:20-24. Let’s read these verses.
“The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—‘ 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
This is God’s Word.
So, this is—in some ways—kind of a mysterious passage, that talks about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. And, as we look at it, I want us to consider three things this morning. I want us to think first of all of the fall of humanity (not just the fall of Adam and Eve, but the fall of humanity). Then, secondly, their expulsion from the garden (paradise). Then, thirdly, these mysterious guardians of the garden (in verse 24).
I. The fall of humanity
The first thing to consider is the fall of humanity, the fall of the human race. This is presupposed in the passage and hinted at in a couple of ways. This is important because it’s only if something that happened in the garden affected us, and not just Adam and Eve, that this passage really has relevance to us today.
First of all, notice Adam’s naming of Eve in verse 20. He had previously named her “Woman” because she was taken out of man (end of Genesis chapter 2). Here, Adam names her “Eve.” We’ve been calling her Eve throughout this series, but it’s only here that she really receives the name Eve, which means “mother of all living.”
This, of course, on one hand suggests that Adam had heard and believed God’s promise (in verse 15) that the serpent’s head would be crushed by the woman’s offspring, and so Adam—in faith—now names her the “mother of offspring,” the mother of all living.
But in recording this, the author of Genesis also wants us to see Adam and Eve as the father and mother of the human race. They are our first ancestors, they are our primeval parents—our ancient ancestors and parents. So, everyone comes from Adam and Eve.
Another indication of this is that the name “Adam” is not only a personal name of an individual figure –an historical figure (and I do believe that Adam was an historical figure)—but it’s also the Hebrew word for “human being” or the Hebrew word for “mankind.”
So, for example, in Genesis 1:27, when we read: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” the word “man” there is the Hebrew word “adam.” It’s speaking not only of the man, but the man and the woman—male and female, He created them, and it’s speaking of all mankind, all human beings here, created in the image of God.
In like manner, Gen 7:21—which describes how in the flood, “all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth,” including all mankind. The word “mankind” is this same Hebrew word (adam), or Adam.
So, in Genesis 1-3, the author wants us to understand as he’s describing what happened to Adam and Eve, that this also happened to all mankind—all of the human race. (It happened to “adam,” all of us.)
But more than this, the narration of the entire story depicts Adam and Eve as representative figures. John Sailhamer, in his very helpful book The Pentateuch as Narrative says: “The narrative gives nothing to help us understand their plight as individuals [there’s no reflection, for example, on what Adam and Eve themselves thought]…the woman, and the man are not depicted as individuals involved in a personal crisis; rather, they are representatives. We are left with the impression that this is not their story so much as it is our story, the story of humankind. (The Pentateuch as Narrative, p. 106)
So, this is why theologians sometimes refer to God’s relationship with Adam in terms of a covenant. There are different kinds of language used to describe this – sometimes it’s called a covenant of works, or a covenant of law. Sometimes this is called the covenant of creation, or the covenant of nature. They all amount to basically the same idea: namely, that humanity, represented by our first father Adam, was in a particular kind of relationship to God: a covenantal and representative relationship, where Adam’s obedience would lead to life and where his disobedience would lead to death, not only for himself, but for all of his descendants. (see Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, p. 83)
This idea is, I think, very important for understanding Scripture, but it’s also an idea that has been questioned and challenged—and even denied by some. One reason it’s challenged is because the word “covenant” obviously does not appear in Genesis 1-3.
Nevertheless, there are some very good reasons to think that Adam’s relationship with God was indeed a covenantal relationship and a representative relationship.
I want to give you three reasons for that thinking:
(1) Though the word “covenant” itself is not used, the basic features of a covenantal relationship – and thus, the structure of covenant theology – are certainly present.
Let me let Michael Horton explain this, from his book Introducing Covenant Theology. I think he does this with real clarity: “Federal theologians,” he says, “argued that every covenant in Scripture is constituted by a series of formulae, most notably, oaths taken by both parties with stipulations and sanctions (that’s blessings and curses). These elements appear to be present, albeit implicitly, in the creation narrative. Adam is created in a state of integrity with the ability to render God complete obedience, thus qualifying as a suitable human partner. Further, God commands such complete obedience, and he promises, upon that condition, the right . . . to eat from the Tree of Life . . . If Adam should default in this covenantal relationship, he would ‘surely die,’ and we learn from the subsequent failure of Adam that this curse brought in its wake not only spiritual, but physical, interrelational, and indeed, environmental disaster. When we include references from the rest of Scripture, Adam is clearly seen not simply as an individual, but as a public representative. Not only was he in covenant with God, but all of humanity is represented as being in covenant with God by virtue of participating federally in Adam. If Adam was our covenant head, this arrangement can only be characterized as a covenant.” (Horton, p. 89)
I think Horton is exactly right.
(2) Another reason for thinking this is so, is because there are literary elements (literary features) of covenant-making included in the Genesis narrative.
In fact, there are some really interesting parallels between Genesis 1-3 and the description of God’s covenant relationship with Israel, in Deuteronomy. Now, I’m not going to go through these in detail, but let me just point out a couple of them.
Take, for example, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (from which eating would bring death). That has a very close parallel with God’s words in Deuteronomy chapter 30, where He sets before Israel a promise of either life (if they obey) or the threat of death (if they disobey). So, in Deuteronomy 30:19-20 we read, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Now, I don’t think any Jewish person could have heard those words, and then read Genesis 1-3, without thinking of the promise of life, or the threat of death, connected to either obedience or disobedience. So, the covenantal features are right here.
When the judgment scene begins (which we looked at last week in Genesis chapter 3), when the Lord comes to Adam and Eve and they hear the “sound” of the Lord’s coming (3:8), that phrase, “sound of the Lord” is a phrase that pops up often in the book of Deuteronomy, and the coming of the Lord to them is very similar to what the Israelites experience when the Lord comes to them on Mt. Sinai—and the Israelites are afraid.
Then, you have the word “naked” in Genesis 3:7, when Adam and Eve realize they are naked. It’s really interesting that that’s a different word than the one that appears at the end of Genesis 2. The word in Genesis 3 is the word that’s used in Deuteronomy to describe the children of Israel’s experience of nakedness when they go into exile, because of disobedience to God.
And there are more parallels, as well. Those are also literary reasons for thinking there is, indeed, a covenant here.
(3) Third, and finally, we have other passages of Scripture which refer to God’s relationship with Adam either as a covenant or in representative terms.
For example, in Hosea 6:7, we read: “But like Adam they [Israel] transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” So, the children of Israel seem to be compared to Adam in his covenant breaking.
And, of course, we have Paul’s words in Romans 5:18-19: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience [that’s Adam] the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
So, I think you can see that this whole idea of Adam being a representative for us is very clearly taught in Scripture.
Now, this is the heavy theological part of the sermon; and we’re through. I know some of you are holding on tight, trying to keep up with this. What are the implications of this, and why is this even important for us to understand? Let me tell you a little story, a little anecdote, to try to make this clear.
One of my mentors in Texas was a pastor and preacher for many years. He kind of helped me theologically in my early years, my early formation. This guy’s father was not a Christian; he was a non-Christian. And, his father had actually been a pretty harsh, stern kind of guy, and they had a pretty tense relationship throughout their lives. When his father passed away, my mentor actually preached his funeral. And when he preached his funeral, this is the sermon that he gave. He said, “My life has been influenced by three men, first of all, my earthly father," and he talked about all the good things he could about his earthly father, his character, his hard work, and the things he could say that were positive about him. And then he talked about his first father, the first Adam, and how his life had been influenced by his relationship to Adam. And then he talked about his relationship with Jesus Christ, the second Adam, and how he had been redeemed through him.
And, in the same way, when we’re thinking about our fathers on Father’s Day, when we think about our first father, Adam, do you know what this means? It means this—no matter how good your earthly father was, you are actually more affected by first father, Adam, than you were by your earthly father. No matter how good your earthly father was, you were born in sin. You were born condemned. And this is the most defining thing about your life before you come to Christ, and you need salvation. No matter how good your upbringing was, no matter how great your dad was.
But on the other hand, the gospel proclaims that no matter how bad your earthly father was, you can be utterly and fully redeemed by a new relationship with the second Adam! And you don’t have to be defined by your relationship with a bad earthly father; you can be completely redeemed, you can be fully saved and utterly changed through your relationship with Jesus Christ.
So, this gives us perspective on Father’s Day. It gives us perspective when we think of ourselves as fathers, it gives us perspective about our own fathers, and it reminds us that we have a history that goes all the way to the origin of the world, and that history can only be changed with a relationship with the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
That’s why it’s important for us to understand this concept of a covenant relationship with God, and how we were in Adam—and if we’re now believers in Christ, we are in Jesus Christ.
That’s the first thing for us to consider: the fall of humanity. Not just Adam, but the fall of the entire human race. Then, secondly, consider,
II. The expulsion from paradise
We might call this Adam and Eve’s exile from Paradise. You see this in Genesis 3, verses 22-24: “Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—‘ 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken." So, Adam and Eve are sent from the garden, they’re sent away.
In verse 24, Adam and Eve’s expulsion is described even more strongly. “He drove them out.” God drove out the man and the woman. One of the commentators says that this is a very strong word that is often used in the Pentateuch for the expulsion of the inhabitants of Canaan. So, when children of Israel came into Canaan and they pushed out the wicked people—the wicked people of those cities—this is the same word that used here, where God pushed them out—he pushed them out of the garden. Cassuto remarks: “God did not just send him forth, an act that would not have precluded all possibility of his returning, but He drove him out – completely.” (Quoted in Gordon Wenham, Genesis, 85-86).There’s no way back—no way back—they’re driven out of the garden.
Now, what’s the significance of this, of them being sent away from the garden? What is it that they lost?
In Edwards’ sermon on Genesis 3:24, one of his doctrinal theses is this: “When man fell, God drove him away from all his former blessedness.” (Edwards, 332). All his former blessedness, all his former happiness, everything that the man and the woman had in the garden, they lost.
We can summarize this in the loss of basically three things:
(1) Physical life: they lost of physical life and the blessings of physical life. Now, they didn’t lose it immediately, but eventually they would. Verse 23 says, they were “sent … out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken” (v. 23)
That’s a reminder of Gen 3:19. Part of the curse: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” So, this expulsion is actually a death sentence. They will work the ground, they will work the dust, until they return to the dust.
(2) They also lost eternal life. Notice this reference to the tree of life, in verse 22: God sends them from the garden “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” What is this tree of life? I think the best explanations come from those theologians who describe it as a sacramental tree, a tree that symbolized eternal life, and through which God would give eternal life to the man and the woman if they ate of that tree.
So God was communicating the grace, or the gift, of eternal life to them through eating of the tree. And God banishes then from that tree; He keeps them from eternal life—they lose eternal life.
(3) And then, of course, they lose communion with God. The garden, as we have seen, was the sanctuary of God. It was the dwelling place of God. It was the temple sanctuary—it was the place where God’s presence dwelt. And they lost that; they were banished from God’s presence, they were banished from this place.
Edwards said: “[Man’s] communion with God was lost; he lost God's favor and smiles. God ascended and forsook the earth, and instead of smiling and blessing, as he was wont to, now pronounces a curse on man. Instead of delighting in God's love and friendship, he had now the anger of the great God to think of, and his own folly in procuring it . . . And in this miserable condition man lost paradise.”
So much was lost in their expulsion from the garden: all the blessings of life, the blessing of eternal life, and especially the blessing of communion with God himself.
III. The guardians of the garden
The text says, in verse 24 “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Derek Kidner says: “Every detail of this verse, with its flame and sword and the turning every way, actively excludes the sinner. His way back is more than hard, it is resisted: he cannot save himself.” (Kidner, Genesis: Introduction and Commentary, p. 72)
What are the cherubim? What’s going on here? It’s really interesting, when you look at the cherubim as they appear in the rest of Scripture. One commentary says: “The cherubim are [essentially] supernatural creatures referred to over ninety times in the Old Testament, where they usually function in the capacity of guardians of God’s [holy] presence.” (In Matthews, Walton, et. al., IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Gen. 3:24).
So, for example, do you remember the ark of the covenant? The ark of the covenant was that box, made of wood and overlaid with gold, in which the tablets of the Ten Commandments were placed, and the portion of manna. Aaron’s rod that budded was placed there. The lid of the ark of the covenant was called “the mercy seat.” On that lid there were two cherubim, and God is said to be the one who is enthroned above the cherubim, because God’s presence dwelt there in the holy of holies, over the ark of the covenant.
Not only that, but in Exodus chapter 26, we read about how the curtain separating off the holy of holies—that most holy place—was embroidered with cherubim, kind of in the décor. When the priest would come to that curtain, he would see the cherubim between him and the holy place. I’ve read before that this curtain was so thick that a team of oxen couldn’t pull it apart—so, this thick, thick curtain. The priest could only go into the holy place once a year. He comes to this curtain, he sees this curtain, he sees the cherubim. . .what is it? It’s a reminder of the cherubim guarding paradise, and that he cannot enter into the presence of God apart from a blood sacrifice, and then only once a year, on the day of atonement.
And then, when Solomon built the temple, in 1 Kings 6, we read of how he placed two wooden cherubim, overlaid with gold, in the inner sanctuary of the temple. These cherubim were huge! Fifteen feet tall each, with a wingspan of about fifteen feet, as well. So, right there in the middle of the sanctuary, guarding, again, the entrance into the most holy place, were these two cherubim. All of this symbolism is there to show us that the cherubim are the guardians of God’s holy presence. That’s their task, to guard the garden.
Ironically, just as Adam, in Genesis 2:15, was given this commission by God to work and to keep the garden (that word “keep” is the word “guard”), now Adam is sent from the garden to work the ground, and he is guarded from ever going back in.
And then, they have this weapon. What’s their weapon? It’s this flaming sword. A sword, of course, is an instrument of war, a weapon for execution. And fire, in Scripture, so often represents God’s holiness and judgment, so here the cherubim seem to be depicted as the holy guardians of the garden, of the tree of life, who wield the flaming sword of God’s holy justice against any who would dare try to enter.
So, that’s the situation.
To summarize everything we’ve seen so far: This passage is showing us that Adam’s violation of the covenant plunged the whole human race into sin. As a result we have lost paradise, the garden, the tree of life, we’ve lost fullness of life, and eternal life, we’ve lost God himself. We are not only banished, expelled, exiled from the garden, but the way back in is closed, guarded by these cherubim and the flaming sword of God’s holy justice.
You begin to see why Edwards called Genesis 3 the saddest chapter in the Bible. In the application part of his sermon “East of Eden,” having considered all that was lost in man’s exile from the garden, Edwards observed that this helps us appreciate just how wonderful is the good news, the gospel. “How joyful then is the tidings that [are] proclaimed to us in the gospel!” He says four things, and I basically want to close here with what Edwards said.
(1) He said we should consider, first of all, God’s willingness to restore us! “'Tis proclaimed in the gospel that God is willing again to receive us into his favor, to pardon all our sins, to quit all enmity, to bury all former difference and to be our friend and our father; that he is willing again to admit us to sweet communion with him…The wrath of God drove us out of paradise, but the grace of God invites us to return.”
(2) Secondly, he said we should consider that, in the gospel, God gives us “another opportunity to obtain eternal life and blessedness that we missed of by the fall.” The gospel not only gives us what Adam lost by sin, but what Adam missed. Adam had never eaten from the tree of life—he missed it. And we get it back; we get not only what he lost, we get more.
(3) But more than this, Edwards said, the gospel proclaims to us that we can have this “without any conditions.” So, here’s the difference between God’s covenant of grace and his covenant with Adam (a covenant of works). The covenant of works was a conditional covenant—only if man obeyed, would they receive life. But the covenant of grace comes without conditions, where God freely gives us life. As Edwards said, “All is done already that needs to be done. The obedience is performed already by another.” Because of Christ’s obedience we get the blessing of life, not because of ours.
(4) And then, the fourth thing he said is this: the gospel is good news “because the eternal blessedness itself that is offered [to us] is in many respects greater than what was offered in the first covenant.” There’s an old hymn by Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign,” where he says:
Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.
We get more than what Adam lost! In Edwards’ words: “Christ's obedience is a more glorious obedience than Adam's would have been, and rewarded with a better reward.”
But then Edwards asks a question. He asks, “How can this be?” How can this God of wrath and holiness and justice—how can this God receive us, welcome us, invite us back into the garden? What about the flaming sword? What about that?
Here’s his answer: “Christ undertook to lead us to the tree of life, and he went before us. Christ himself was slain by that flaming [sword]...and now the sword is removed, having done its execution, already having nothing more to do there, having slain Christ. There is no sword now, and the way is open and clear to eternal life for those that are in Christ.”
Now you might be thinking this is clever, but wondering if it’s really biblical. Is that really what was going on? I think it is, and let me tell you why.
Do you remember how I just mentioned that the cherubim, these guardians of the garden, were woven into that curtain of the temple, to remind the priests that they couldn’t get into God’s presence? Do you remember happened when Jesus breathed his last breath and cried out, “It is finished!" "Into your hands I commit my spirit”? He died on the cross. The veil was torn open, it was rent, the text tells us, from top to bottom, to show us that the way was opened into God’s holy presence! Do you know why? Because the wrath of God, the judgment of God, the holiness of God was satisfied once and for all in the perfect obedience of the Son.
And that’s why we can read in Hebrews: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:19-22)
The way is open!
Let’s pray.
Holy and gracious Father, our minds really struggle to comprehend the reality of our condition—both in Adam and in Christ. Our condemned status in Adam seems almost too terrible to believe, but the evidences of it are all around us. We see the evidence of the curse on the human race. We see a world wracked with pain and sorrow and suffering; we see violence and disorder and injustice; we see death and disease; we see suffering all around us. No life is untouched; every one of us is faced with our mortality. So we see, every day, the reality of this judgment: “In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” So, we have to reckon with the fact of death, and the best—and the biblical—explanation for that is that in Adam we died.
But then, we also struggle to grasp the reality of the good news, that in Christ we are made alive! We have borne the image of the man of dust—and to dust we return—but, if we bear the image of the man of Heaven, we are made like him, and we have the promise of resurrection life, because Christ died for sins, once and for all, because Christ took our place on the cross, because he bore the judgment that we deserve so that we would be free of judgment. He endured that flaming sword so that we could be readmitted into your holy place!
Father, give us faith to believe this; give us confidence and boldness to lay hold of it. Let us never underestimate the high privilege of communion with God, the privilege of prayer, the privilege of living in relationship with you.
Let the gospel, this morning, take root in our hearts, and may that happen now, as we come to the table to [take] the bread and the juice. And we pray this in the name of our great high priest, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
