TEXT: Genesis 3:14-24

SUBJECT: Henry on Man’s First Temptation #5

Tonight, with the Lord’s blessing, we’ll complete our study called Matthew Henry on Man’s First Temptation. Henry was an English Puritan pastor who is best known for his great Commentary on the Whole Bible. We’re using that book to guide us in our meditation.

The old story of Adam and Eve is a true one. They were real persons who made a real choice—a choice they had to live with—and so do we. The old rhyme has it,

When our first parents chose to disobey God, the Lord chose to punish them for it. And what a punishment He meted out that day! The perfectly innocent and happy couple was no longer innocent or happy. Now they were guilty, ashamed, and scared; they were given up to more sin, and thrown out of the Garden; hardships were placed upon them: Eve would suffer in childbearing; Adam would sweat in his work; and both of them would die.

The moral to the story is not hard to find: sin is a lot worse than you think it is! The Lord did not overreact in bringing down these judgments on Adam and Eve—and us! This is how bad sin is! Thus, we ought to hate it, stay clear of it, and when we fail, to confess it, repent, pray for help, and do everything we can to avoid it in the future.

At this point, the story is a dark one: Adam and Eve have lost paradise and are put out to face a world red in tooth and claw. But this is not the end of the story. The offended God is also the merciful God. He doesn’t leave them in despair, for the story ends in hope.

Though they have lost every claim on God’s goodness, He has not taken it all away. The Lord still provides for them. Henry has a lot to say here—and spreads it over several pages, but I’ve organized it under two headings. First, we have the things that make human salvation possible and more likely; then, we have the thing that guarantees it.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they might have been struck dead and sent to hell on the spot. If they had been, they would have had no reason to quarrel with God, for that’s what He told them He would do: "In the day you eat thereof, you will surely die".

But the Lord did not do this! He wanted to save the human race, not to abort it. To make this possible, He took several steps that maybe you haven’t thought of before. But that’s all right—Henry always thinks of it!

First of all, God declares war on Satan. The Puritan says,

Someone has said "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". There is a lot of truth in this. Winston Churchill hated Josef Stalin, but when Stalin declared war on Nazi Germany, the British Prime Minister was happy to have him on his side. When asked about it, Churchill said he would sign a pact with the devil if he were against Hitler. You understand why. Against powerful enemies, you need all the help you can get.

The devil is our enemy. Moved by an acute sense of envy, he has always done everything within his power to see us live in sin and die without hope. If he had the strength of a worm, we wouldn’t need help; if he had the strength of an army, perhaps, banding together, mankind could repel his attacks. But Satan is far stronger than the mightiest human army. Therefore, if we are left to fight him off by ourselves, we are without hope of success.

But we are not left to ourselves! God is on our side! He is limiting the power of Satan, exposing his schemes, and keeping him tied up all over the world so that he cannot vent his full fury on anyone. What’s more, He is turning the servants of Satan against each other and making them fight it out instead of uniting for an attack on the Church.

What if the Lord had chosen the other side? What if He wanted to redeem the devils, and to do this, declared war on us who are in league with them? Or, what if He had remained neutral, saying a pox on both their houses! Let all demons and all men go to hell! If He had done that, we would all be lost without hope. But He didn’t do that. God chose sides! He became our Ally in the great war against hell!

In the second place, God keeps mankind alive.

When they sinned, Adam and Eve came under the curse of God, but note, the curse was not nearly as bad as it might have been! There is quite a bit of good mixed in with it. Adam will have to work hard to eke a living out of the ground. But he will! The ground produces weeds, of course, but if it grew nothing but weeds, the human race would have perished long ago. But it doesn’t grow weeds only. With wisdom and hard work, it can be successfully farmed.

Eve will suffer much in bearing and rearing children. But she will do both! What if the gift of fertility had been taken away from her? She and her husband would have been—not only the first people—but also the last. By keeping the human race alive, the Lord also kept the hope of salvation alive.

Add to these mercies good warm clothing. In clothing Adam and Eve in animal skins, many have seen a picture of salvation. I’m not so sure of that—and it’s certainly not alluded to in the text—however, one thing is sure: the world outside the garden was not a fit place to traipse around naked. They needed something to wear—and fig leaves just wouldn’t do! So the Lord made them outfits to ward off the cold and protect their tender bodies from the rain, the wind, and the heat they would suffer from this day until the day they died.

Food, clothing, and children were given to Adam and Eve and with these gifts, the hope of better things to come.

At first glance, this doesn’t sound like much of a favor, but it is. Unlike you and me, Adam had no sense of death, that life could end, and maybe very soon. Yet the Word of God informed him of the appalling fact, that man is like grass—lush and healthy one day, but brown and dead the next.

The Word is meant to wake him up to his mortality, that his life may be very short indeed, and therefore, he must make things right with God now. Dr. Johnson’s famous line makes you smile, but it also makes you think:

The Bad News urged Adam to find peace with God and to serve Him while he had the time to do it. That is a great blessing,

Moses sang,

The fruit of the Tree of Life could be had for the picking. God did not pick the fruit and put it into Adam’s mouth. No, Adam and Eve could have it any time they wanted it. But no more! From now on, if they’re going to have life, it will be by God’s special grace. The Lord will have to walk past the flaming swords, pick it for us, and give us a bite. Salvation is in His hands alone!

There is no temptation more common or harder to shake than the idea that—somehow or other—you save yourself. By what you do or don’t do; by what you believe; by what you feel; by the church you belong to, and so on. Yet this idea is ruled out just minutes after the first sin is committed!

Compared to us, Adam must have been amazingly strong, smart, and alive. But he was no match for an army of angels who were commanded to guard the Tree of Life. Life was in that fruit, but there was no way Adam and Eve could get it on their own. If they were going to have it, God would have to bring it to them.

The doctrines of human depravity and inability—if believed—will drive a sinner to despair. Which is precisely what they were intended to do! To make him see no hope in saving himself, and so broken, to turn to God alone. Like the scared sailors, we can only cry,

These are the things God did to make salvation possible and more likely: He restrained the devil, kept man alive, put him under the pressure of time, and made him despair of saving himself.

Had He left it here, we would have all died in our sins. For making salvation possible is not enough. The Lord has to go beyond that to actually save us. He has done just that.

The guarantee comes in v.16; scholars call it protoevangelium—the first Gospel promise. About it, Henry has a lot to say and here’s some of it.

A lifetime of sermons wouldn’t scratch the surface of these dear promises. But note some of the highlights:

First, if sin enters the world through a woman, salvation also enters the world through a woman. It is not a man who produces the Savior, but the virgin Mary who conceived and bore the Son of God before she was ever with her husband.

How cheering the ways of God are! I know a woman who killed herself because she thought she gave her husband a deadly disease. What must Eve have thought of herself! She must have been in utter, total, and lasting despair. She loved her husband and yet she ruined him forever! Every mother wants to protect her children, but she exposed them to sorrow, disease, and death. By her own act of rebellion, she murdered her whole family!

But God says through her—the first sinner—He will bring salvation!

Second, if Satan is cruel and powerful, God will bear the brunt of his vicious attacks! Satan is the enemy of everyone, but only God (in the Lord Jesus Christ) takes everything the devil’s got! For us!

Third, God is the winner, and with His victory, we win too! We are saved—not because we repented or believed or persevered (though we must do all of the above)—but because God has put us in union with Christ. And if He rises over sin, Satan, and death, we rise with Him!

Man’s First Temptation, therefore, is a Comedy, not a tragedy, because—despite all the problems we endure—we all live happily ever after. Because of what God has done for us in the Woman’s Seed, our Lord Jesus Christ!