NOTES:

• Big Idea: Sin makes us hide. Grace comes looking.

Point 1 — THE LIE: Sin makes us question the goodness of God

Genesis 3:1–7

1. Genesis 2 ends with the man and woman “naked” and unashamed; Genesis 3 immediately introduces the serpent as “crafty.” The Hebrew words arummim and arum sound strikingly similar, a deliberate literary link recognized by ancient and modern interpreters. Innocence and vulnerability stand face-to-face with cunning
   • They were naked and had nothing to hide. The serpent was crafty and had everything to hide.
   • Revelation 12:7–9 (Michael fights the “the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan.” Isaiah 14:12–15 and Ezekiel 28:12–17 (King of Babylon and King of Tyre), Matthew 25:41 speaks of “the devil and his angels,” again indicating that Satan is the leader of a group of rebellious spiritual beings.
   • John 8:44 — “You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.”
2. “Did God really say...?”

1. God's abundance becomes God's restriction.
• The enemy wants you counting God's restrictions instead of God's gifts.

4. God's Word is questioned, altered, then contradicted.

1. The serpent's first words attack God's Word: “Is it really true that God said...?”
2. Notice: God gave the original command to Adam before Eve was created (2:16–17).
3. When Eve repeats it, the command has changed:
• God's generosity is minimized.
• “Do not touch it” is added.
• The certainty of “you will surely die” is softened.
4. Did Adam fail to teach Eve accurately? Possibly—but the text doesn't tell us.
5. What we do know is that God's Word was being distorted, and Adam—the one who originally received the command—failed to stop what followed.

10. And the serpent's question has never gone away: “Did God really say...?”
    • Did God really say marriage is between a man and a woman?
    • Did God really say our sexual desires must submit to His design?
    • Did God really say Jesus is the only way to the Father?
    • Did God really call that behavior sin—or should we redefine sin according to what our culture finds harmful or acceptable?
    • Did God really say, “Deny yourself”—or is the highest good actually discovering and expressing your “true self”?
    • Does Scripture have the authority to correct us—or do we keep reinterpreting it until it agrees with us?
11. From a historic evangelical perspective, the dividing issue underneath these questions is authority: evangelicals have traditionally held Scripture as the highest authority for Christian belief and conduct, including salvation through Christ and biblical sexual ethics.
12. This doesn't mean every disagreement about biblical interpretation is “rewriting Scripture.” Faithful Christians can disagree about difficult texts. The danger is when we already know the answer we want and then make the Bible say it.
13. We rarely throw the Bible away. We simply edit it until it stops confronting us.

1. When those entrusted with God's Word become silent, someone else will gladly rewrite it.
2. The temptation beneath the temptation: Can I trust God to define what is good for me?
3. They reach for autonomy—and discover shame.

17. Often before sin becomes an action, it becomes a story we believe about God.
18. ILLUSTRATION: In 1807, a radically abridged Bible was published for use among enslaved people in the British West Indies. Large portions of Scripture were omitted—including material that could encourage liberation, such as the Exodus story. The point was chilling: give people enough Bible to make them obedient, but remove the parts that might challenge the system benefiting those in power.
19. Romans 1:25 — “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

Application:
What sin in your life has become reasonable because somewhere along the way you started believing God was withholding something good?

You don’t often fall in a moment, you fall because of the decisions you made before this moment.

20. ILLUSTRATION: Thomas Jefferson created what became known as the Jefferson Bible by physically cutting passages from several New Testament editions and rearranging what remained. His version focused on Jesus' moral teachings while omitting miracles and supernatural elements, including references to life after death. The actual cut-and-paste volume is preserved by the Smithsonian.
    • Most of us would never take a pair of scissors to this book. But we can do the same thing without ever cutting a page.
    • Every time I accept what Scripture says when I agree with it and ignore it when I don't, I have created my own Jefferson Bible.

Point 2 — THE HIDING: Sin breaks everything it touches

Genesis 3:8–19

1. Shame: they cover themselves.

1. Fear: they hide from God.
2. Blame: Adam → Eve → implicitly God; Eve → serpent.
3. Relationships fracture.
4. Creation itself groans under the consequences.
5. Yet God comes asking, “Where are you?”
• Luke 19:10 — “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
6. 1 John 1:9 — “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.”

8. Sin promises you something worth seeing, then leaves you terrified of being seen.
9. You may run from God because of your sin, but Genesis 3 reveals a God who comes looking for sinners.
10. Where are you hiding? What are you covering? Who are you blaming?
11. ILLUSTRATION: In 1951, six-year-old Luis Armando Albino was playing in an Oakland park when a woman approached him, spoke to him in Spanish, and promised him candy; instead, she kidnapped him and took him across the country. Police, soldiers, and the Coast Guard searched, and his mother spent the rest of her life believing he might still be alive, dying in 2005 without ever seeing him again, while his picture remained hanging in the family’s homes. More than seventy years later, his niece began searching through DNA, photographs, and old records, and in 2024 Luis was finally reunited with his family; when he met the niece who found him, he hugged her and said, “Thank you for finding me.” That is what sin does: it comes offering candy—freedom, pleasure, fulfillment—and then carries us farther from home than we ever imagined. Adam and Eve took the fruit, and suddenly there was shame, hiding, blame, fractured relationships, and a wounded creation. Sin always promises more than it gives and takes more than it tells you it will cost. Yet God walks into the wreckage asking, “Where are you?” Adam is hiding from God, but God is looking for Adam. Sin sent us hiding; grace came looking. And perhaps the most beautiful words a lost sinner will ever say to Jesus are simply, “Thank you for finding me.

Point 3 — THE HOPE: God does not abandon what sin has broken

Genesis 3:15, 20–24

1. This is fascinating. God has just said, “to dust you will return.” Then Adam names his wife Eve because she will be the mother of the living. Many Christian interpreters have therefore seen at least a hint of faith here: Adam has heard death pronounced, but he also heard God's promise concerning the woman's offspring, and now he speaks of life.
2. A promised offspring: the serpent will not win.
   • Genesis 3:15 has traditionally been called the protoevangelium, the “first gospel.”
   • Before God sends them out of Eden, He announces that evil will not have the last word.
   • Romans 16:20 — “The God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”

1. A name of life spoken in the shadow of death.
2. God clothes the ashamed.
3. God bars the tree of life.
4. Humanity leaves Eden—but not without a promise.

7. The ground cursed in Genesis 3 produces thorns. In the Gospel story, Christ wears a crown of thorns.
   • Humanity brought the curse. Jesus wore the curse as a crown.
8. In Genesis 3, humanity hides from God among the trees. In the Gospel, God comes to humanity and hangs upon a tree. The story that begins with us running from Him ends with Him giving Himself to bring us home.
   • Romans 5:8 — “But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
9. ILLUSTRATION: Rick Hoyt was born with cerebral palsy and could not walk or speak, but in 1977, at fifteen years old, he communicated to his father, Dick, that he wanted to enter a five-mile charity race for another young man who had been paralyzed. Dick was not a runner, but he pushed his son in his wheelchair for all five miles. That night Rick told him, “Dad, when I’m running, it feels like I’m not handicapped.” Those words changed everything. For decades afterward, father and son raced together—Dick pushing Rick through marathons, pedaling him on a specially designed bicycle, even pulling him through the water in a boat during triathlons. Rick could not run the race himself, so his father carried him through it. I wouldn’t run in a race without him. I’m running for him. And I think there is something of the gospel in that picture. Genesis 3 is the moment humanity becomes broken in ways we cannot repair ourselves. We cannot undo the fall. We cannot find our own way back into Eden. We cannot remove the curse or defeat death. So God did not stand at the finish line shouting instructions to broken people who could never get there—He came for us. Jesus entered our brokenness, bore our sin, carried our curse, and is bringing us somewhere we could never reach on our own. God did not abandon what sin had broken. He carried it toward redemption. And one day, when Christ makes all things new, perhaps every redeemed heart will understand what Rick felt in his father's arms: I could never have made it here by myself—but my Father carried me home.

Final summary

The Lie: God cannot be trusted.
The Hiding: I cannot be seen.
The Hope: God still comes for me.

Sin drove us out of the garden, but grace began building the road home before we ever reached the gate.