Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Genesis 3:21-24
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  November 29, 2023

Being exiled is not something that anyone would choose to be. It never has a positive connotation. You can hardly think of anything more depressing than being forced to be away from home, a place you desperately wanted to be. 

We have pictures of exiles in the Bible. In a certain sense, the children of Israel were in exile, barred from the Promised Land as they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Even prior to that, in a sense they were exiles in Egypt, barred from returning to the Promised Land because of their slavery. Certainly, they were exiles in Babylon, which we will talk about next week. But I don’t know that I ever considered Adam and Eve to be exiles. But that’s exactly what they were.

When you think about it, the only home they knew was the Garden of Eden. And while we don’t know how long they were able to enjoy it, it was home. And we know what happened that brought us to this point. Adam and Eve had fallen into sin. They had ruined their relationship with God. They could no longer stand in his presence without fear and shame. They had brought curses upon themselves. Really, they could have and should have been destroyed. But God showed them grace and mercy. We see one example of that in verse 21. “The Lord God made clothing of animal skins for Adam and for his wife and clothed them.” But then God kicks them out of their home. He banishes them from his presence, drives them out, slams and locks the door behind them, and sets a guard in the path to keep them from ever coming back in. They’re exiles.

Why? Why would God be so harsh, so seemingly unloving when he had just shown them mercy? I think that’s the way that we react to this sometimes. But was it really harsh? Was it really unloving? Or was it actually the opposite. Look again at verses 22-24. “The Lord God said, “Look, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, so that he does not reach out his hand and also take from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever—” the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he had been taken. So he drove the man out, and in front of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned in every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life.” 

This is not the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil now, but the Tree of Life. Notice the conversation God has with himself. “What if man, doomed now to guilt, shame, limitation and loss, should eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. I can’t let that happen.” It would mean that man would never physically die but would exist in that evil condition forever, forever spiritually exiled from God. Notice how God leaves that sentence hanging in the air as though the result is too terrible to describe. God wasn’t willing to let that happen. And so in his mercy and love, “the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he had been taken. So he drove the man out, and in front of the Garden of Eden he stationed cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned in every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden as an act of love! They were never to eat from the Tree of Life so they wouldn’t be condemned to sin forever. They would not be able to live forever by anything they did. And that truth has remained. There is no way that anyone can come to God by doing something–none at all. By nature all of us are exiled from God’s presence because of the sin that we inherited from Adam and Eve. No, there is no way for us to get to God, so God came to us!

God came to us by sending his Son Jesus to be our Savior. He first promised it to Adam and Eve here in Genesis 3 when he said in speaking to the serpent Satan, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” That’s what we are preparing for in this season of Advent. We’re preparing to celebrate God bringing us out of our exile back to a relationship with him. And there’s only one way. Jesus himself tells us. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” 

You see, there is a way to life forever in God’s presence. There is a way to the Tree of Life. It’s only through Jesus. In wonderful imagery, John describes what heaven will be like in the book of Revelation. And what do we see pictured there? The Tree of Life.  “The angel showed me the river of the water of life, which was as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb. In the middle of the city’s street and on each side of the river was a tree of life that yielded twelve kinds of fruit. The tree yields its fruit every month, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.” But we don’t have to wait until we’re in heaven to drink from the water of life. Jesus has already given it to us in his Word. That’s what he told the Samaritan woman at the well. “Whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty ever again. Rather, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water, bubbling up to eternal life.”  

As we prepare once again to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus, who has brought us back home from our spiritual exile, let’s recommit ourselves to drinking deeply from the water of life. Let’s take the time to ponder anew the love that God showed Adam and Eve by exiling them from the Garden of Eden so that they could be brought back home through Jesus. And let’s take the time to thank our God for bringing us home as well. Amen.