Restoring Order - Genesis 3:16–24

Do you like for things to be in order? Some people are more passionate about this than others. Often, someone who is passionate about order is married to someone who is not! Some people are more organized than others or like things neater, but we all rely on order. In fact, we expect it. The things you use in everyday life were assembled in an orderly fashion: the house you live in, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, your phone, your watch, your refrigerator. 

Imagine if our city was not laid out and constructed in an orderly way. The universe is composed and operates in an orderly manner. So does the human body. Even the messiest, most disorganized people value and desperately need order. 

God has established and preserved a great deal of order in the world He created. But sin introduced tremendous disorder into the peaceful order of creation. This passage of Scripture today addresses three specific areas where sin brought disorder: in the family, in our work, and with our God. 

However, Jesus Christ came to restore order. His gospel transforms the family and changes how we approach our work and interact with God. When we follow Christ and apply His gospel, order begins to return. This is one aspect of how Jesus heals our lives.

But when Jesus restores order in these areas of our lives, what is the result? Well, to answer that question, it helps to understand the nature of the disorder created by sin and also to realize that Jesus restores a certain kind of order: God-centered order. He dispels the man-centeredness produced by sin. And notice the results outlined on page 6. That God-centered order resolves the natural conflict within the family, dissipates the natural drudgery of our work, and eliminates the natural alienation from our God.

Now, just before verse 16, God pronounces the curse on the serpent and gives a glimpse of the triumph of His Messiah over Satan. God now turns to the woman. The curse of sin came upon Adam and Eve, but God does not pronounce them cursed as He does the serpent and the ground. This may suggest God’s mercy towards them. He does not strip them of their responsibilities as His image-bearers on the earth, but now they must now endure hardship and pain in their God-given roles. 

Earlier in Genesis, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth and subdue it. They were to populate and rule over earth on God’s behalf. But as the man and woman were created differently, their roles were different. Obviously, the burden and the work in reproduction and childbearing was on the woman. We don’t know what it would have been like before sin, but God’s judgment toward the woman is that her pain in carrying and birthing children would be greatly multiplied. There would be an abundance of distress. 

This could possibly refer also to her child-rearing. One of Eve’s sons murdered his brother. That had to bring her terrible grief. Losing your child would be awful; your child killing someone would be terrible. She endured both within her own family. 

A child wounds the mother as he or she exits the womb, but the wounding can go on throughout the life of the child. Proverbs 17 says, “A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.” Some of the worst pain a mother can ever know may come through her own children, not wounding her body, but her heart. There is excruciating pain at childbirth, and then, because of sin, natural conflict going forward. God tells the woman there will be this kind of torment in birthing, no doubt a sign of things to come. And she caused it.

If you are a mother, you know the pain of motherhood, not just at childbirth, but afterwards. The sorrow, the anguish. The effects of sin are devastating, but not all is lost. Jesus restores. He can restore your heart and carry you forward. He brings God-centered order to the lives of those who believe and apply His gospel. There is hope in motherhood because while you cannot change your child, you can obey God and uphold the truth and walk by faith. You can pray and seek to give yourself wholly to Christ and entrust your children to Him.

Now notice God’s second pronouncement. He tells the woman, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” Some translations read, “Your desire shall be for your husband,” which sounds positive. But this pronouncement is not good. This describes a wife’s natural desire to control and rule over her husband. Sin flips the roles in the family. 

How many TV sitcoms and movies have you seen where the wife or mother is competent and the husband or father is incompentant. It’s meant to be funny, and certainly men can appear incompentent at times.  But the man is the God-ordained leader of the family. Husbands should be able to lead with humility and women should humbly follow and support. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had harmony in their marriage, they were satisfied in their roles, and they felt loved and appreciated and valued for who God made them to be. 

Sin put things out of order. There would now be a power struggle between husband and wife. Actually, Adam seems to quickly make an effort to put God’s order back in place. Notice verse [20] The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. In chapter 2, he called her “woman.” Now he gives her this name. Previously, God instructed Adam to name the creatures as part of his decree that Adam have dominion over them. This seems to be an extension of that, Adam recovering his position in marriage.

Even if you and your spouse don’t bump heads often, you must ask, “In what ways has sin resulted in role reversal in my marriage?” Husbands, do you lead humbly and diligently, and wives, do you encourage and support your husband as the leader of the family? Husbands, do you champion and cherish your wife as your helper and the mother of your children? Fathers, do you encourage and build up the mother of your children? So much of our pain and stress is the result of the disorder described in these verses, and this speaks to an obvious reality: all relationships naturally deteriorate. 17th century pastor John Owen famously stated, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” Be killing sin in the marriage, or sin will kill the marriage. Be killing sin in the family, or sin will kill the family.

Only through the gospel of Christ can the God-centered order that resolves the natural conflict in the family be restored. The gospel teaches the family to never stop speaking of the effects of sin and Jesus’ triumph over it. Because of sin, we must actively pursue humility born out of a growing understanding of the vast effects of Jesus’ saving work and our need for it.

Self-righteousness must be banished; only Jesus-righteousness should be allowed. No self-glory permitted; only God’s glory. No self-centered efforts to control; only a determination by everyone to submit to God’s control and His will in all things. No attempts to change others through shaming. The gospel teaches us to proclaim God’s love through Christ as the highest motivation for upholding God’s moral law. 

You must look to Jesus for the power to obey and do what is right. This is why the Word of God must be central in the home. Prayer must be consistent. Worship must be practiced and learned. Love, grace, and truth must be studied and treasured. We must forgive and ask for forgiveness. Jesus can restore the family!

He also restores our work. God now turns to the man. Verse 17 says Adam “listened to the voice of [his] wife,” rather than God’s voice, his wife’s word rather than God’s Word. As a result, the ground is cursed. The garden in Eden was like a Thanksgiving table: you could just walk over, take and eat. Adam could graze. But outside the garden, the earth would not be a banquet table. 

Rather than offering food to the man, the ground would try to keep food from him. Notice the end of verse 17, “In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field,” rather than the fruit of the garden. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” Moses used the same Hebrew word for Eve’s and Adam’s pain: it will be painful labor. Today, almost no one grows their own food, at least not the bulk of it. But making a living is still painful and frustrating. It can seem like everything is working against you in your work. A sense of meaninglessness can start to creep in. The drudgery of our work is the result of sin. Work is not bad; God assigned work to Adam and Eve before the fall. 

But now, disappointment and aggravation in our work is normal. The writer of the OT book of Ecclesiastes stated that his work seemed to be all in vain. He wrote, “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, [19] and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun.” No wonder many folks are bitter at the end of their lives. And look what will come in the end, verse 19, Adam will labor “till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 

Adam was intended to rule over the earth; now the earth will rule over him. He would have his wife trying to rule him and the ground trying to take him down. And in the end, it would. Adam and Eve would eventually die, but not before a life of painful labor to eat and survive. Do you see? Things are out of order.

Do you ever experience this sense of drudgery in your work? It may not always be that way, but even when it is not, we are still prone to make it a man-centered thing. How could Jesus ever change the way you view your work? By restoring God-centered order. In Colossians 3, the apostle Paul states, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” We need our view of God transformed, then our view of work will be transformed. 

When we view work in light of the gospel, we begin working for more than the weekend, for more than the paycheck, for more than the riches and achievements. The gospel teaches you to work for your Lord who saved you, to bring glory to Him, to contribute to His growing kingdom in the city in which He places you and to recognize how what we do provides for others and builds up the community in which we live. The work will still be hard, but God-centered order dissipates the drudgery.

Now, these final verses tell why we also naturally feel alienated from God. It’s because we are. Verse [21] And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Again we see God’s mercy. He covers them; He does not give up on them. And notice verse [22] Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” This is another sign of the triune nature of God: three persons but one God. 

“Knowing good and evil” refers to the man and woman’s loss of innocence. They failed God’s test of obedience. They now know good and evil but unlike the triune God, Adam and Eve are unable to do good and resist evil. Now Adam cannot “reach out” or literally “send out” his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Instead, “the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden.” Same wording. 

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.” They are banished from the presence of God, who is their Creator and their father. They could no longer remain in God’s holy presence. An angelic being and a sword would guard what Adam and Eve were supposed to guard. Again, God-centered order ruined by sin.

But you know what they needed? They needed to get back into the garden and eat from the tree of life. They needed the life that only God could provide, but they had no currency for a transaction with the Creator. They could not earn or buy their way back in. They were no longer holy or blameless. That was the requirement for re-entry. 

The location of the garden was later lost, but the presence of God would not be lost forever. Jesus restores the God-centered order that eliminates our natural alienation from our God. In Colossians 1 in the NT, Paul tells the churches, “You, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, [Jesus] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” The second Adam, Jesus Christ, earned re-admission for His people to eat from the tree of life and know God-centered order as it was in the beginning. At the end of the Bible, Revelation 22, the apostle John wrote, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” Their sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus, and they return to God and live.

That will take place on the last day, when Jesus returns. Until then, we struggle against these natural conflicts in our families, this natural drudgery of our work, and the natural feeling that God is still against us, still far away from us. But each Lord’s Day we remember, and may we remember every day, that though our God sent away our first parents, He has come for us. We still struggle against sin in this life; Jesus has not yet destroyed sin completely. But He has broken sin’s power over His people. We who are born again can know and experience the power of His restoration here and now. 

Have you tasted the goodness of God-centered order in your life? Cry out to Jesus, turn from your sin, and trust in Him.

Let’s pray together.