Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 3 and we are going to read Genesis 3:6-8:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of JEHOVAH God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of JEHOVAH God amongst the trees of the garden.

I will stop reading there. We have been going through this account and we have seen that the serpent came and began to lie and he deceived the woman. Now the woman is reviewing all she was told by the serpent and it is making her look at this tree anew and she is seeing all the positive things: 1) it is a tree that is good for food; 2) it is a tree that is pleasant to the eyes; and 3) it is a tree to be desired to make one wise. Then she took of the fruit and gave it to her husband that was with her and he also ate of it.

This happened at an unspecified time after the point of creation. We do not know exactly how long it was from the time God created the world and the time that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit. It could have been a week or a few weeks. The Bible does imply that it was not a very long time at all, so there was a short period of time in which the world was good and there was no sin. Then came this day and this day changed everything for the world.

You know, for individuals like you and I some days are bad days. We may hear of horrible things or we receive some tragic news and maybe it is about someone we care for and he or she has died. It may be the same for a city or a nation or even for the world – some days are very bad. They are terrible days. If the day is terrible enough mankind tends to mark the date as an historical occasion and they may even observe that day every year. For instance, the President of the United States marked December 7, 1949. It was the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He said it was “a date which shall live in infamy.” The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and many Americans were killed. It was a grievous day.

More recently, we are all familiar with what took place on September 11, 2001. All you have to say is “911” and people understand. That day was an awful day. It was an extremely terrible day because of the terrorist attack upon the Twin Towers in New York City, where almost 3,000 people died. There have been many days in the world’s history like this – plagues, wars and atrocities – and a good way to put it is how FDR said it: “A date which shall live in infamy.”

But the truth is there has never been a worse or more terrible day than the day the serpent came to Eve. Eve listened to the serpent and she was “bearing with him,”< which she should not have done. Adam permitted his wife to have this conversation and, therefore, he is also guilty in that aspect; he was the head of the woman and he had a responsibility. It was a day that Eve made a fateful decision. Of course, we know it was according to the plan of God and His glorious plan of salvation. We know that, but on that day over 13,000 years ago when Eve took of the forbidden fruit she crossed the boundary of God’s commandment. She ate of the fruit and she knew “evil.” She experienced evil for the first time and because of her action the world came to know evil.

It is hard for us to really understand what happened on that day because we live in a world that is corrupt and full of evil. Our fathers and our fathers before them never knew a “good world.” We have never known what it is to have a world that is good and a human race that is good and a world where there is only life and no death. We never knew a good and right relationship with God and all the intimacy that could have been available between man and His Creator. What is normal for us is a world given over to evil, where nothing is perfect and where none are good and where death rules over the earth and where man’s relationship with God is shattered and broken (unless God has saved us). But that is the world we are most familiar with and that is a world full of evil. The only hope and rescue from the evil was from the salvation of God.

Prior to the fall recorded in Genesis, God had said that everything He had made was good. He created everything perfect and there was no death or corruption. There was no disease. There were no spots or blemishes of any kind upon any aspect of the creation.

Sadly, only six thousand years later, it is recorded in Genesis 6:5:

And JEHOVAH saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Eve wanted to know “evil.” Eve wanted to experience it. Adam wanted to know and experience this mysterious thing that was unknown to them. The tree held the secret and the serpent said, “Oh, you will not die. Everything will be wonderful. God knows that when you eat it you will be as “elo-heem.” Your eyes will be opened. So they ate and now we see God’s description of every human being that followed after in all the earth. We do not know how many people there were a few thousand years after the flood, but there was probably only a couple of million people and God looked on every one of them and He said that the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. Man had come to know what evil was and the mystery of evil. We are very familiar with it, are we not?

It says in Ecclesiastes 9:3:

This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

The hearts of the sons of men are evil. God is looking upon the whole human race and everyone born of a woman and He says through Job, in Job 14:1:

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

It also makes a very telling point in Job 14:4:

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.

The moment Adam and Eve committed sin they became unclean. Man and woman were unclean. They were the only two people in the world and, therefore, when they had children the children were conceived in sin, according to the Psalms, and born speaking lies (unless God had saved Abel in the womb). All mankind was conceived in sin from that point and salvation would have had to occur after the point of conception. God did save Abel because the Bible indicates he had a righteous soul, but Cain was never saved. All human beings came forth as unclean from unclean parents because Adam and Eve sinned before they had any children and every child they would have would be conceived and born in sin and they would enter into the world dead in sins and trespasses. They would be full of evil, as it says in Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

This is the fallen nature of man. You cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing. That is why it is impossible to have a child that is “innocent,” as some theologians have incorrectly taught. They teach an “age of accountability.” They say, “Children are innocent of sin until they reach a certain age.” They may say that age is 12 or 13, or whatever they say, but it is completely wrong. They are saying that somehow two wicked parents with hearts full of evil can bring forth an innocent child, a child without sin. That is the only way they could be innocent would be to be without sin. This teaching is foolishness and it is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible is very clear that we are conceived in sin and children are sinners just like their parents.

Mr. Camping used to compare babies to “baby rattlesnakes.” They might be cute or charming little rattlesnakes. We are frightened of the daddy and mommy rattlesnakes and we might want to kill them, but the baby rattlesnakes are so harmless. Or, are they? No, they are not harmless – they are rattlesnakes. They are nothing better than their parents and they can only be like their parents and so it is with mankind. If our parents are sinners, we are sinners and we cannot rise above the spiritual level of our parents. We cannot be clean when they were unclean, so we are all born unclean. We are all dirty, rotten and filthy sinners. That is what the Bible says and that is why the world is so enamored with sin. They are in love with sin.

It says in Micah 7:2-3:

The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly…

They do evil with both hands earnestly. In the Bible the “hand” represents the will of a person. When you do evil with both hands it means that your will is completely given over to sin and to evil. This is what you want. It is what you desire and it applies to all mankind because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, as it says in Romans 3:10-12:

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

And just to tie this in with the analogy about rattlesnakes, it says in Romans 3:13-14:

Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

There is nothing but evil, evil, evil. They are evil in heart. They are evil in thought, word and deed. Man is evil in body and soul. He has more than gained knowledge of evil. He has gotten a doctorate in evil, as it were. He has come to embody evil and is perfectly aligned with evil in every aspect of his life.

It says in Psalm 52:1-4:

Thy boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually. Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Selah. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue.

Thou lovest evil. Can you imagine the necessary perversion that would have to fill a mind and soul to love evil? Just look around. Look around at the world. On a daily basis we see evil everywhere. We hear reports of evil. We see evil at work, in our neighborhood and in our families. With some of the atrocities, we can only shake our heads at the depths of the depravity man has descended into and it is such awful wickedness that it is beyond shame. It is all over the face of the earth, day after day after day. How could it exist to this degree and be so widespread in every nation, city, village and town in all the world? There are billions of people that are happily committing evil in their minds, in what they say and in what they do. How is this possible unless man loves it? He loves evil. That curiosity about the tree: “What is evil? What could it be?” Can you imagine the innocence of someone thinking this way as Adam and Eve thought about the tree? “What would evil be?” They thought it might be something exciting or good or something that would help them and, yet, it was nothing but calamity, damage, injury and harm.

Down through time the horrible things that have happened in world history are a result of evil, such as disease and death. People die of heart attacks, stroke and old age. Why did their bodies wear out? Why did their hearts stop? Why did their brains hemorrhage? It was because of evil, but in the beginning it was not so. There was no death, but God said, “Thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Death entered into the world and death began to rule, according to Romans 5:14. Death rules because of sin, which is disobedience to the Word of God. Man has done violence to his fellow man, even brother to brother, like Cain killing Abel. There has been tremendous hurt to his fellow man. It is an enormous pile of transgression that has brought nothing but misery, agony, sorrow and grief and the world has been made a veil of tears because of evil. This is what it means to break the Law of God on even one point.

Eve did not shoot anyone. Today people think that “evil” is when you are a terrorist or murderer or something like that – that is the only evil they tend to recognize. But it was something that appeared small and insignificant, which would not even register in this present filthy and evil world. If someone today said, “Hey, God said you should not eat of that tree,” the response would be: “That is nothing. It is nothing.” We laugh at the idea that the first sin was eating of a forbidden tree – this does not even seem like sin to a world that is so totally immersed in evil. Yet, to a good world and to a pure and holy world, there was one Law and mankind went over that boundary and broke the Law of God. They broke the everlasting covenant and this is all the result. All the terrible things that have happened in the history of the world can all be traced to the root cause of what took place in the Garden of Eden.

We cannot blame Adam and Eve because it would point right back to ourselves. We were all in the loins of Adam and he represented all of us. We all took of the fruit of that tree. We all rebelled against God. If there is any need of evidence, we need only look at your life and my life. How many times have we known the Law? We have known the Law in regard to lying, stealing and cheating and, yet, we have transgressed these Laws. We broke the Law. We have committed sin. We have done the same thing and we have brought death upon ourselves.

This is the state of the world and that is why the Gospel was so important. The Gospel light and the Gospel waters went forth to sinners in this terrible condition. We will have to speak more about this in our next Bible study.