Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #6 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 know that in the Bible “nakedness” points to having one’s sins exposed to the eyes of God – there is no covering from sin. Of course, this was the very first sin. Adam and Eve were once “naked” in innocence before they ate of the knowledge of good and evil, but now they know evil through the experience of disobeying God and, immediately, they realized they were naked.

The first thing they did was to “go to work” to cover their nakedness. This was the point of sewing the fig leaves together and making aprons for themselves. They felt “exposed.” It was their wrongdoing and the guilt and shame of their transgression in breaking the Law of God that made them feel “naked.”

The understanding that they were naked caused them to want to cover or conceal their nakedness. They wanted to hide it and they wanted to do something so that they would not be naked any longer. Of course, this would all have been instinctive in man’s fallen state. In Adam and Eve’s fallen condition, they instinctively felt naked and they instinctively wanted to cover their nakedness. Perhaps, they were near a fig tree or maybe they thought the fig tree leaves would work best in covering their nakedness, but whatever the reason, they sewed together fig leaves to cover their nakedness.

What were they involved in doing when they sewed together the fig leaves to cover their nakedness? The answer is, “They were involved in work.” They had to do work to obtain the leaves, to sew them together and to make aprons that would cover their nakedness. This is important for us to realize in regard to sin and man’s instinctive reaction to attempt to cover his sin. How does he (attempt to) cover his sin? It is always through “works.” God tells us in Galatians 2:16:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

A “work of the law” is really defined as any attempted obedience in regard to a commandment of God and man has developed all kinds of “works” throughout the history of the world in order to cover his sins and to try to make his sins disappear from the probing eyes of an angry God. Man realizes deep down that God sees his sins. God knows he is a sinner and man knows that he is in trouble with God because he has offended God and brought the wrath of God upon himself. As a result of this spiritual condition of being a sinner under the wrath of God with his sins open and naked to the eyes of God, man develops all kinds of “coverings” for his sin. These coverings are put into place through “works.” So we have other religions that come up with their own kind of a god. God has written His Law upon the hearts of men and, deep down, man knows he has transgressed and is guilty, so in ancient times man made a god of wood or stone and decked it with gold and then they set up criteria by which this “god” could be appeased and his anger could be satisfied, even if it was through the offering of one of their own children. Whatever it was, they developed a system of works to satisfy the angry god and then they went about to perform that work. It is the way of all the religions of the world – they perform certain deeds and this is the work that will make you right with your deity and, therefore you have covered your sin.

In the Bible God gave commandment in the Old Testament concerning sacrifices and Laws. It was the same in the New Testament. One of the Laws of the New Testament stated, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The New Testament readers had a better understanding than at the time prior to the cross because God had opened up more Scriptures after the cross. They realized that they could not get right with God through sacrifices or through the keeping of the Law. The verse we read in Galatians 2, verse 16 is a good verse to show this fact: “for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” But, many have a confused understanding of faith when they read verses like: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Let us be clear – this is a commandment. God very directly states this in 1John 3:23:

And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

The word “commandment” is the same word as when God speaks of other commandments like, “Thou shalt not kill.” It is a commandment of God that you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but because of the Bible’s language regarding faith and the confusion on that subject by the theologians down through the centuries, the churches developed a wrong notion in regard to the work of faith. They knew that there was no way to get right with God by keeping the commandments of the Bible, but they think you can get right with God by believing in Jesus and accepting Christ. “The Bible says, ‘Believe,’ so if you believe you will be saved.” They do not see their problem. They do not see that it is a commandment. They do not understand that God has said it is His commandment that we must believe. It is a Law of God: “Thou shalt believe.” Again, God gave many Laws, like the Ten Commandments. Some are negative and some are positive, but they are all commandments of God and no man is justified through keeping the commandments, even though the Bible allows for that possibility when it says that if someone were to keep the commandments of God, they would be justified. That is a truth, but if you fail on even one point, you are guilty of all. If you did not fail on any point, you would live.

But the enormous problem for man is that he is spiritually dead and, therefore, it is impossible for man to keep the Law of God regarding all the commandments of God in the Bible, including the commandment to “believe.” However, the church theologians, the pastor, elders and deacons and the people that populate the churches have the mistaken idea that they can get right with God and have their sins covered through keeping this one Law to believe: “If I believe I am saved.” Yes, but faith is a “work” and you are performing the work of faith because a work is obedience or attempted obedience to the commands of God. Since God commands us to believe, it is, therefore, a Law and no man is justified by the works of the law. But, that same verse goes on to say that we are justified “by the faith of Christ.” It is through faith we are saved, but it goes on to say of faith, in Ephesians 2:8:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves…

It is not your faith or my faith or any man’s faith that saves. It is the faith of Christ that saves someone. This way, we are not exercising our faith and we are not trying to keep the Law on this point of faith by obeying God’s commandment to believe. If we did that, we would place ourselves under the whole Law and we would be obligated to keep the whole Law of God. It is Christ’s faith that saved His elect people.

So, as Adam and Eve are instinctively attempting to cover their nakedness, they are setting the pattern that all unsaved people follow in one way or another throughout the history of the world. People will seek some kind of covering for their sin; through other religions and other gospels they will seek to do the work themselves to cover the guilt and shame of their sin and to try to hide their sins from God. God is gazing upon them and they think, “I have to put something between God and me. I have to find a covering to block that terrible and piercing gaze of an offended and angry God who is looking down upon me.”

Today more and more people are not religious. They are secular. They are agnostics or atheists. What of them? What of their sins? Do they not try to cover their sins in some way from God? How could that be if they say there is no God? They are going about it in a slightly different way, but they attempt to achieve the same results as the man who tries to cover his sins from God. These other people try to cover and rid themselves of their sins by doing away with God Himself. If there is no God above, then there is no one looking down on them and seeing their sins, naked and open to God. If there is no God, there is no guilt. There is no commandment that has been broken. They are seeking justification for the way they want to live (which is to do things their own way) by saying there is no God to see their sins. It is just another way of covering sin and of making that which is evil “good.” If there is no God, there is no Law that has been broken and there is no transgression and, therefore, nothing is evil or bad: “All is what you make it.”

Again, historically, I am sure Adam and Eve had no idea they were illustrating what all later generations of men would do in order to attempt to cover their sins and escape from the eyes of God. They felt naked right away and God is the one that gave them that feeling because God is the one that makes that identification in the Bible concerning “nakedness” and “sin.” Nakedness points to sin and it requires a covering. Later in this chapter God would provide the (physical) covering, but later in the Bible God will lay out a proper covering, one that is Biblical and a God-approved covering for sin and that would be the application of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible will refer to Christ’s righteousness as a “garment” and something that covers and conceals the sins of man.

That would come later on, but right now Adam and Eve are not waiting upon God. They are going to take care of the problem themselves. They sinned and now they are going to try to make that go away through covering themselves with fig leaves.

Let us look at some of the words here. They knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together. The Hebrew word that is translated as “sewed” is Strong’s #8609 and it is used in some interesting places, but we are just going to look at one place. It says in Ezekiel 13:17-22:

Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, which prophesy out of their own heart; and prophesy thou against them, And say, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies? therefore thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Behold, I am against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am JEHOVAH. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life:

There is some very difficult and unusual language here, but God is speaking of the daughters of His people in verse 17 and He says they prophesy from their own hearts, so we can understand that when He says that these women that are sewing pillows to all armholes it is related to false gospels and it is connected to promising life to those that are wicked; it is connected to telling people that are still in their sins that they are saved. It is just like today when the churches tell people that this is what they need to do to be saved: “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” Then the person says, “I believe,” and the church leaders respond, “Hallelujah, Brother!” If they do not come right out and say the person is saved, there is a very strong implication that the person has become saved through their act of “accepting Christ” and believing on Jesus. For all intents and purposes, this is a promise of life from the leaders of the churches: “Remember this day.”

When you share the Bible with people, sometimes you encounter people from various churches and denominations and many times they will tell you they are saved. The person will say, “I accepted Christ on May 10, 1999.” He knows the day he accepted Christ because that was the day he believed he became saved because he had been promised that. It was like they told him, “You have salvation. Here is your card. Put it in your back pocket and if anyone ever asks, you can tell them that you are saved because you did this work.” It is not what the Bible says, but it is what many churches say or, at least, insinuate. It is the promise they give. God also points this out in the New Testament, in 2Peter 2:18-19:

For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty…

And what is liberty? It is freedom. Jesus said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” This is the liberty that the churches promise people, but it goes on to say in 2Peter 2:19:

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption…

They had never become saved. They have followed the same erroneous path and the same broad way that leads to destruction and now they have handed it down to others and as Christ said of the proselytes of the Pharisees, “Ye make them twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” It is the tragic truth that the churches have no idea what true salvation is, as defined by the Bible, and they share their misconceptions about salvation with others and these others follow suit.

We will have to look some more at this passage in Ezekiel, chapter 13 in our next study.