Merciful and Mighty
If there are two things you must know about God, it’s that he’s both just and merciful. He is righteous and good. He is holy and kind. He is merciful and mighty.
We start to see this even in the first chapters of the Bible. In Genesis 3, we’ve learned that God is just, that he upholds his word. He gave Adam and Eve the warning, “In the day that you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you shall surely die.” Then they ate from the tree, and he doesn’t just let it go. He doesn’t act like it hasn’t happened. He calls them to account.
But even in his justice, he’s merciful, and unexpectedly so. This is the part of the story that’s the most surprising and striking. God gently approaches Adam and Eve with questions, seeking to draw them out of their hiding, inviting them and giving them opportunity to confess their sin and repent, rather than driving them out with threats and condemnation.
The God of the Bible doesn’t let sin go and the God of the Bible loves to give mercy to sinners. This is who God is. This is who he’s always been. And this is who he’ll always be.
As we come to the end of Genesis 3, we see these two aspects of God’s character on display again. In verses 20-24, we’ll see Adam’s response to God’s merciful promise, then we’ll see two further examples of God’s justice and mercy woven together as God continues to respond to Adam and Eve’s sin. Here’s how we can outline our text: Adam’s response (v. 20), God’s provision (v. 21), and God’s protection (vv. 22-24).
Adam’s Response
In verse 20, we learn that Adam renames the woman, “Eve.” Because of sin, the woman will have pain in childbearing (justice), but in spite of the pain, the woman will have the blessing of children (mercy). In spite of the penalty of death, there will be life, generations of life.
Notice that the narrator says that Adam names her Eve “because she was the mother of all the living.” Why “she was the mother” and not “she will be the mother”? Why is this past tense instead of future? Because the narrator wants to emphasize that Adam was absolutely certain of this fact, that he firmly believed that Eve would have children, that though death was coming, life was also on its way.
Adam believes that this is as good as done before it’s done. What do we call this kind of thing, when someone believes a promise of God before it’s come to pass? We call it faith. Adam naming his wife “Eve” may be the first profession of faith in the fallen world.
Even though they’re threatened by death (v. 19b), Adam doesn’t believe that he and Eve will be the last humans on earth. After a death sentence, Adam names his wife “life.” This means that he heard the promise of 3:15 with faith. He’d accepted God’s word in faith.
Adam’s naming of Eve is also an example of him exercising humble headship. Remember he already named her in 2:23, before the Fall. Now he names her again after the Fall. Before the Fall, he names her “woman,” acknowledging that he’s her source of life and her companion. But after the Fall, he names her “Eve,” acknowledging that he’s indebted to her for life’s future. Her first name points to her origin. Her second name points to her destiny.
The Gift of Motherhood
Despite sin, the gift of motherhood will emerge. And what a beautiful gift to mankind! Some have tasted the sweetness of this gift in a mom who loved and nurtured and held and taught and encouraged and prayed for and blessed them. Many have not tasted this beautiful gift. This is perhaps one of the things that God intends for the local church. That, in the church, we might find a new family. Not a perfect family, but for many a kind of family we’ve never had.
Paul literally describes the church as a family with brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. He says, “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters” (1 Tim. 5:1-2). The church is a web of familial relationships, a network of relationships between men and women from all of life’s stages. This is one of the things that makes it so beautiful and unlike our culture that defines associations by shared interests like politics, life stages, ethnicity, or income.
In my first years here, I was blessed beyond measure by the older ladies of our church. Some are still with us (Rose, Linda, Sandra), many have gone on to glory. I’ll never forget Pat Brown, who joyfully loved and encouraged me. She said I was like a grandson to her. I loved her love for our church family. As our church grew younger, she and Gale would still come to things with the young people because they were thrilled to be part of the family.
I want to say a quick word here to all ladies. Verse 20 implies that motherhood is part of what it means to be a woman. What do I mean? Adam names her “life-giver” before she has kids, so her identity as “mother” wasn’t contingent on her having children. This means that there’s something “motherly” that’s intrinsic to your womanhood. This doesn’t mean that all women will have or should have children. Many won’t, and many can’t. It does mean that there are ways that you’re wired that are motherly, regardless of whether you have kids. This is perhaps why women generally have a deeper sense of empathy, a tenderness and compassion, a nurturing spirit, an ability to create and cultivate beauty in a home, an ability to “mother” even if you’re not a mother.
This is what Pat Brown was to me. Even though her kids were all grown, she never lost her mothering abilities. This is why my mother-in-law and my own mom are two of the most encouraging people in my life. Hugging them is like a drink of cool water on a hot day. They have an ability to care for me, even as an adult, that’s astonishing.
Ladies, whether you have kids or not, or whether you have kids at home or not, pray and ask God to use your gift of mothering to bless his people. You have things the church and the world desperately need. Oh how dark and difficult the world would be without the gift of motherhood!
God’s Provision
In verse 21, we see that God covers them with clothes. This is God’s final gift to Adam and Eve in the garden. But the clothes will also be a reminder of their sin. So we see mercy and judgment mingled together here.
Nakedness was deeply shameful in ancient Israel. In Israel, God couldn’t be approached by anyone unclothed. The law commanded the priests to cover their private parts when they approached the altar (Ex. 20:26; 28:42).
It’s no surprise then that Adam and Eve needed to be decently clothed as they prepared to leave the garden, so God clothes them himself. Prior to sin, this wasn’t necessary, but sin always profoundly changes things.
Just as pain in childbirth and pain in work would remind Adam and Eve of their disobedience, so also their clothing would be a daily reminder that they sinned against God and could no longer walk freely before him in innocence. The reason any of us wear clothes today is because of what happened in the garden. Our clothes should remind us what we lost because of sin.
It says that God made Adam and Eve’s garments of “skins,” meaning “animal skins.” This “garment,” or “tunic,” was a basic outer garment worn next to the skin, like a long shirt that reached the knees or ankles. Adam and Eve could only make themselves loincloths (3:7), so God provided them with full and proper clothing. This would cover their embarrassment and protect them from the elements.
These “skins” had to come from somewhere. The text doesn’t say that God killed animals to get them, but that seems like a fair implication. Therefore, this text anticipates the notion of sacrifice through killing animals, though it’s not stated explicitly.
The work of the priests in the tabernacle is foreshadowed, as both the word “garments” and “clothed” are used to describe the priests who served in the tabernacle (Ex. 28:42-43). The tabernacle was the meeting place with God, so you had to be properly clothed to enter it.
The garden shapes the imagery of the tabernacle, so it’s not surprising to find an allusion to animal sacrifice in the garden too. Because Moses seems to have the tabernacle in mind when he writes verse 21, and because the tabernacle is where animal sacrifices were made by priests who had to be properly clothed, it’s safe to conclude that this verse may function as the basis for, or at least historical forerunner of, the sacrificial system.
The Snake Crusher is Crushed for Us
Why is this important? Because Israel’s sacrificial system was not meant to be an end in itself. It was meant to point forward to the cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross, the sacrificial system was fulfilled and ended, as Christ the Great High Priest was sacrificed for the sins of his people once and for all (Heb. 7:23-28).
Jesus is different than all other priests. He has no successors because he lives forever (v. 24). He makes an implicit intercession for his people forever (v. 25). He is holy and pure (v. 26). He’s not morally compromised because we need a priest as perfect as God is. He doesn’t have to keep offering sacrifices (v. 27). The blood of animals is symbolically significant but had no moral significance. So God sent a sacrifice who would be morally, not just physically, pure.
Jesus, the perfect priest, was unclothed for his people. He was stripped and beaten for them. He endured shame to take their shame. He carried their guilt so that they could be righteous. He received the curse of the law and couldn’t see the smile of God.
On the cross, Jesus became sin for us. On the cross, the snake crusher was crushed for us. On the cross, the priest became the sacrifice. On the cross, God’s justice was satisfied and his mercy displayed. The cross shows us that judgment doesn’t have the last word.
Connection between Verse 20 and 21
There’s a connection between verses 20 and 21 that shows us that God’s judgment doesn’t have the last word for his people. Just as Adam renames his wife, so God will re-clothe the couple. “Woman” gives way to “Eve” and fig leaves give way to leather.
Both of these actions indicate that there’s a future for Adam and Eve beyond the misery of their present. Adam and Eve will survive because of the gracious intervention of God. Out of mercy, God will give them children and clothes. With God, sinners have a future.
Our Lives Are Naked Before God
Adam and Eve needed a specific kind of covering to make it safely through the world. So God provided it. Adam and Eve had attempted to cover their own shame and protect themselves, but their self-salvation project didn’t work. They needed a covering that required death, a covering provided by God, not man.
We find ourselves in the same spot as them. Our lives are naked before God. He sees all and knows all. He sees our attempts to cover what we’ve done with good deeds. He sees our calculus of comparing ourselves to others to minimize our sin and guilt. He sees how we don’t think he’s that holy, that sin is that serious, or that hell is a real place. He sees our attempts to use religion to cover up who we really are.
And yet, remarkably, he sends Jesus to us in the gospel and says, “If you’ll stop trying to save yourself, I’ll save you, cover you, forgive you, and bring you back into my presence.”
If you hear his voice today, don’t harden your heart. Admit your sin to him. Believe the gospel. Confess that Jesus is Lord and was crucified for your sins and raised on the third day. And receive unending mercy and kindness from the God who made you. If you do that, you can have the shameful nakedness of your sin before a holy God covered up today. Why wait any longer?
God had to kill an animal so that he could make Adam and Eve garments that would properly cover them. In the same way, God had to kill his Son in order that our sins could be forgiven and so that we might be clothed with his righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” How do we become the “righteousness of God”? “In him – in Christ.” Christ must become our righteousness. His righteousness is the only garment that will fit us for heaven.
God’s Protection
In verses 22-24, we see one final instance of God’s mercy and judgment mingled together. Because God is just, he kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden. Because God is merciful, he protects them from eating of the tree of life so that they won’t live in their fallen state in a fallen world forever. By guarding them from returning to the tree of life, God is withholding a good from them that “would have been unbearable in (their) present condition.”[1]
In verse 22, it’s as if God’s sentence ends in mid-air, leaving us to supply the rest of God’s thoughts, “Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever, let us expel them from the garden.” This is unusual in Hebrew. The omission of the conclusion conveys the speed of God’s action. He’d barely stopped speaking before they were sent out of the garden.
God acted decisively and swiftly. He is just and he never lets sin go. He doesn’t act like nothing happened. He comes through on his word. Man’s sin provokes God’s judgment.
Yes, mercy is here too, in that they don’t die physically immediately. But they die in a way even worse than that. Because of their sin, they die spiritually. Their intimacy with God is now replaced with alienation from God. In the mind of the Israelite, to be removed from the presence of God was a kind of “living death,” more catastrophic than physical death.
Because of their sin, God puts them out in the cold, disowns them, and makes them homeless. Yes, in mercy, God gives them clothes and kids. But they’ll also suffer for what they did.
Guardians at the Gate
There’s further tabernacle and temple imagery here. The cherubim are placed “at the east of the garden of Eden” (v. 24), implying that this is where the entrance was. The tabernacle and temple were also entered through the east. This means that the garden was an archetypal sanctuary where God was uniquely present in life-giving power.
This is what Adam and Eve forfeited when they ate the forbidden fruit. And this wasn’t a temporary arrangement. What was done could not be undone. The cherubim function like later Levites who were posted around the tabernacle and were to strike down anyone who approached unlawfully.
These cherubim were the guardians at the gate of the garden. No, you won’t still find them over in the Middle East somewhere, as the flood destroyed the garden and the two trees in its center. These cherubim were put there temporarily to guard what Adam was supposed to guard.
They were angelic beings armed to guard the garden, or the place where God met with man. This prefigures what comes later in the tabernacle and temple. The ark of the covenant had two golden cherubim sculpted on top of it (Ex. 25:18-20). The curtains that surrounded the tabernacle had cherubim “skillfully worked into them” (Ex. 26:1, 31), as did the veil in front of the holy of holies (36:35). There were two massive golden cherubim made to stand over the ark in the inner sanctuary of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. 6:23-28). Also in the temple, there were “carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, in the inner and outer rooms” (v. 29). The inside of the temple was made to look like the Garden of Eden.
The Curtain
You may remember that when Jesus died, the curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom (Mk. 15:38). The theological implications couldn’t be clearer. God’s presence was in the holy of holies, only accessible by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. So when the curtain was ripped, God’s presence was made available to everyone.
This was an act of God. The curtain was torn “from top to bottom.” God ripped it because he decides when and where his saving presence goes. No sinner can enter his presence without being consumed. But because of Jesus’ death, God’s presence is now freely and fully available to all who trust in Christ. God made himself available to all people.
The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross says it this way:
“When Jesus died, something amazing, astonishing, astounding happened…The curtain tore! God had ripped up the Keep Out sign! God’s wonderful place is open again! Because Jesus died, we can go in!…And Jesus has sent everyone an invitation to come and live with him there too! He tells us, ‘God says it is wonderful to live with him. Because of your sin, you can’t come in. BUT I died on the cross to take your sin…so all my friends can now come in!’ We can live with God forever! There will be nothing bad, and no one sad. We will see God and speak to God and just enjoy being with God – just as he planned. It will be wonderful to live with him.”[2]
Jesus opened heaven’s gates through his death. The “flaming sword” of God’s judgment fell on Jesus so that we could go back into the garden to live with God.
Finding Nothing and Losing Everything
Genesis 3 ends with man having to leave the garden and the door locking behind him. Man has fallen from innocence and been exiled from the good land of life and blessing to live in a cursed land of death and pain.
The serpent promised them privileges, but they got pain instead. Rather than might, they get misery. Rather than thrones, they get thorns. Rather than reward, they get a reversal. Rather than gaining something they didn’t have, they lost what they did have. As one scholar says, “They found nothing and lost everything.”[3]
They lost what we’ve longed to regain ever since. But God, through Abraham, will continue to unfold his plan to bless his people again.
Once Closed, Now Open Again
The way to the tree of life was blocked, but Revelation 22 says that it won’t be blocked forever (vv. 1-5). Those who have their robes washed by the blood of the Lamb and made white will “have the right to the tree of life and they may enter the city by the gates” (v. 14).
The garden was once closed but is now open again. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’…And let the one who is thirsty come” (v. 17).
[1]Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), 94.
[2]Carl Laferton, The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross (The Good Book Company: 2016).
[3]Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 208.