“The Blame Game”
Genesis 3:1-15

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Second Sunday after Pentecost—June 7, 2015

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Although it is not as popular in the United States, the rest of world is preoccupied right now with the world championship of the world’s most popular sport.  The modern game of soccer arose in the 1800’s among the universities of England.  It became the world’s most popular sport because with the rise of the British Empire soccer spread from England throughout the world.

Today’s Old Testament Reading records the beginnings of another game, even more popular and widespread among us humans.  A game which has captured all humanity, a game which has spread out from the Garden of Eden, passed down through the generations, a game at which you and I and all of us are truly world champions: “The Blame Game.”

“The Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’  He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’  And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’  The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’”

Can’t you just see Adam pointing his finger, as he puts the blame on Eve and then even on God himself?  “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”  That was the beginning of the finger-pointing, fighting, arguing, the beginning of “The Blame Game.”

Before the Fall into sin, Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony as husband and wife.  Theirs was first perfect marriage—and the last perfect marriage.  For, when sin entered into and infected our world, sin also entered into and infected marriage, and all our relationships with our fellow humans.  Ever since, our relationships with one another are all too often marred by finger-pointing, fighting, arguing.  No longer the perfect harmony of Eden, but the sad disharmony caused by sin.

In Ephesians, Paul describes sin as “the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”  The fall into sin brought hostility into our lives, hostility between us and our fellow humans, and also hostility between us and our Maker.  As Adam says, “The woman you put here with me.”

For many years the Berlin Wall ran down the middle of Germany, dividing a nation.  In the same way, imagine sin as “the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” running right down the middle of your life, dividing you from God, and dividing you from your fellow man.  But, Paul says, “He himself is our peace . . . who has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”  Just as the Berlin Wall was broken down, Jesus Christ has “destroyed the barrier” of sin, “the dividing wall of hostility” separating us from God, and from one another.

Today’s Old Testament Reading has the first sermon recorded in the Bible, given by God himself, in Genesis chapter 3.  Every good sermon should have both Law and Gospel.  First, the Law, proclaiming the bad news of our sin, to bring us to sincere repentance.  The Law is like the diagnosis of a terminal illness given by a doctor, the diagnosis of your spiritual sickness, and your need for the cure only God can give.  Then comes the Good News of the Gospel, to bring you to sincere faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior.  The Gospel is like a doctor’s wonderful good news of a miracle cure.

This first sermon recorded in the Bible follows this Law-Gospel pattern.  After Adam and Eve fall into sin by yielding to the temptations of Satan, and rebelling against God by eating the forbidden fruit, God first sternly proclaims to them the bad news of their sin: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? . . .  What is this you have done?” 

But then immediately God proclaims the Good News of the Gospel, promising to send the Savior, when he says to Satan in the last verse of the reading: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your descendants and her Descendant.  He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.” 

Although that is very bad news for Satan, for Adam and Eve and you and me and all of sinful humankind it is THE Good News, the Gospel.  Theologians call this verse, in Latin, the Proto Evangelium, the “first Gospel,” because in this verse for the first time God promises to send the Savior of the world.  As Paul explains in Galatians, “The Scripture does not say ‘and to descendants,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your Descendant,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.”

God promises that one of Eve’s descendants will be much more than just a man.  He will be the God-man, who will crush Satan and defeat him.  Adam and Eve were really the first Christians, because they believed God’s promise to send the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.

The fact that Adam and Eve understood the promise this way is revealed in the next chapter.  When Eve gives birth to her firstborn, Cain, she says, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.”  The Lord promised Eve that one of her descendants would be the God-man, and she believed the promise, so when her first child is born she thinks the promise has already been fulfilled and exclaims, in faith, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.”

But, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day,” and it would be many centuries, many millennia, before the promise would finally be fulfilled.  As Paul says in Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.”

That first promise of the Savior, given back in the Garden of Eden, was fulfilled by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  When it says that Satan shall “bruise” his heel, it means that like a man being bitten while crushing a snake underfoot, in the process of defeating Satan, the Messiah himself would be wounded.  As Isaiah said, “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.”  But, on the third day he rose from the dead, triumphant from the grave.  He defeated sin, death and the Devil for you, he earned forgiveness for your sins and a place for you in heaven.  He made all things right again between you and God and between you and your fellow humans.

Paul advises Pastor Titus: “Remind the people . . . to be peaceable and considerate.”  Like the final horn of the final game of the World Cup, Christ’s death and resurrection signals for you the end of “The Blame Game.”  You will no longer put the blame on others, because you trust that God put the blame for us all on his own Son.  As Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross.” 

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger . . .” Paul says in Ephesians.  “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”  “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved,” Paul says in Colossians, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

That is the end of “The Blame Game.”