Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Adult Sunday School Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/bb/bb20010617.htm

SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (ORGANIZED BIBLE KNOWLEDGE)
Part V: Anthropology
B. Man At The Fall
  1. Introduction
    1. Man has a problem in himself: anyone who listens to the news or reads his newspaper headlines or local police reports knows that. As Pogo Possum's column once put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"
    2. Knowing just what is man's problem so we may have direction and hope toward a solution begins by understanding the cause of man's trouble as recorded in Genesis 3 (as follows):
  2. Man At The Fall (I am indebted to L. S. Chafer's Systematic Theology, vol. II (Anthropology).
    1. God created man to have a wholesome, fulfilling life on earth, Genesis 1:27, 31.
    2. However, he sinned, throwing away his chance for happiness and earning grief instead:
      1. God had warned of death were man to have eaten of the forbidden tree, Genesis 2:16-17.
      2. This does not mean God was unjustly goading man into temptation so he could be damned: God had supplied man the Tree of Life so man could eat of it and live forever, Gen. 2:9. Were he to have eaten of that tree, Genesis 3:22 reveals God would have closed down man's access to the forbidden tree lest he live forever in sin! The TRAGEDY of Eden was that MAN heeded Satan's lure when he could have hurriedly eaten of the RIGHT TREE and had GOD intervene to stop Satan's temptation!
      3. The result of this disobedience was the havoc we humans have experienced ever since:
        1. Adam and Eve saw their nakedness from eating of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and tried to cover it up in a hapless manner, Genesis 3:7.
        2. Adam's sin nature spread upon the whole human race so that all who come through Adam are sinners at the point of their conceptions, Romans 5:12-14; Psalm 51:5.
        3. All men are thus totally depraved in their natures, and consequently all do acts of sin in their lives, Jeremiah 17:9; Genesis 6:5; Romans 3:23.
        4. Havoc ensued in the human experience due to this sin in man: (a) Relationships became estranged as man broke fellowship with God (Gen. 3:8-11), with one another in marriage, family and community relationships (Gen. 3:7, 12; 4:1-8 and 4:13-24 respectively). In just seven generations, man had murdered, practiced bigamy and developed urban centers with their problems, Gen. 4:1-17. (b) God's judgment followed to counter man's rebellion, adding to his afflictions: (+) God cursed the serpent to crawl on the earth and to have enmity with man sine he had been used of Satan to lure man insubordinately into sin, Gen. 3:14-15. (+) God cursed the woman: since she had lusted after the forbidden fruit, God gave her sorrow in the process of bearing her own fruit in childbirth, Gen. 3:6, 16a,b; since she acted insubordinately in leading her husband into sin, she was pressed into deeper submission to him to a frustrating level, Genesis 2:22-23; 3:6b, 16b,c. (+) God cursed the man: since Adam had submitted errantly to his wife, he was to struggle with insubordinate ground and plant life in producing food, and ultimately succumb in death to the humiliation of returning to the lowly earth from which he had been made, Genesis 3:17-19.
    3. Yet, in judgment, God remembered mercy, hinting at the final solution to come in the Person of Christ:
      1. Genesis 3:15 prefigures the victory of Christ at the cross: Satan's (the serpent, cf. Rev. 12:9) head would be crushed as Christ's heel was bruised to make atonement for man's sin, Col. 2:13-15; 1:13-14.
      2. God made skins at the price of animal life to clothe sinful Adam and Eve, Gen. 3:7, 21. This pictures the clothing the believer gains of Christ's righteousness through faith in the shed blood of the Lamb of God, Genesis 3:21 with 2 Corinthians 5:21.
      3. To keep man from eating of the Tree of Life and living forever in sin, God drove him from it, placing a guard over the tree to preserve its way for the time when sin in man was handled, Genesis 3:22-24.
      4. Revelation 22:2, 17 reveals the Tree of Life will be accessible to justified, glorified believers once they get to heaven free of sin in every way.
Lesson: Man's havoc comes through his SIN, and the peace of God through God's solution to that sin, through the salvation from sin and consequent victory over sin that is in Jesus Christ.

Application: For victory over sin, trust in Christ and heed His Word in living victoriously over sin!