Derek Grier - Reverse The Curse
Open your bibles to Genesis 3:8. "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves". This is tragic because in the past, when they heard God, they ran to meet him. Now they're running to hide. You see, God never changes, but there are things that change in us. And if God seems far away, guess who moved. So they "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden".
This is important. Guilt is when you think you have done something wrong. But shame is when I say, "I am bad". Shame is that intensely painful feeling that we are somehow unworthy of love, acceptance, and belonging. Pain, shame, and alienation are probably the closest things we can come to to hell on Earth. And at this moment, Adam and Eve are experiencing just that. But then we see verse nine, "Then the Lord called". At their lowest moment, at the height of their turmoil and their shame, the Lord called. "We who were dead," Ephesians 2, it says, "in trespasses and sins," separate from Christ, excluded from the people of God, foreigners to the covenants, without hope and without God.
But the Lord called. You may not think you need to thank Jesus. You may not understand my hallelujah, but I know where my help comes from. I know who called me. You hear what I'm saying? While I was in my sin twisting, he said, "Live. You shall live and not die on the garbage heap of life". He called me by name and I can't help but say, "Thank you". In the midst of tremendous turmoil, emotions they had never felt before, emotions that they really didn't have any memories in their minds that kind of compartmentalize or no background to be ready for. In the midst of that, the Lord called to Adam. He still knew Adam's name. And he said to him, "Adam, where are you"?
Now, every animal in the garden was absolutely disgusted with them. I'm sure the lion wanted to bite them, the elephant wanted to step on them, and the rhino wanted to gore them. But God still cared. Where they were. Big or small, God still cares for it all. So Adam and Eve are in this moment, they did what they were not supposed to do. The presence of God, I believe, had lifted from their lives. Something died on the inside. Their connection to God was not the same because now they're hiding. And God, instead of striking them dead with lightning, he asked the question, and this is the first question in all of the Bible, he says, "Where are you"?
And that's my question to you today. Where are you? I know you're in church right now, or maybe you're streaming from home, but spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, where are you? I'm gonna say something that's probably gonna surprise you, but feeling lost is not always a bad thing. It can be a sign of real spiritual awareness because it's the first step in every return. So he said to Adam, "I heard your voice". Well, Adam said to him, by the way, "I heard your voice in the garden".
So prayer is not just a monologue, it's a dialogue. It's supposed to be a back and forth. So he speaks back to God and answers God's question. And I'd like you to verbally and vocally, in your prayer time, to answer this question. Where are you? Where are you in your life? Where are you in your emotions? Where are you in your thinking and mind? So he said, "I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself". Shame produces fear. You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide. And the more you fear, the more you hide. It's a vicious cycle. But I want to say something before you're too hard on yourself about feeling lonely sometimes. Loneliness can be good for us. It reminds us that we are not complete in and of ourselves.
We are creaturely. We need others. And more importantly, we need God. And there's a certain level of loneliness we will feel when we're operating apart from God's strength, apart from God's purpose. And that loneliness is not a bad thing. It's designed to drive you to God. And then God spoke back to Adam, and it's going back and forth. He said, "Well, Adam, who told you," now by the way, Adam had just sinned. Eve sinned with him, but he's still having a conversation with God. Your sin should not stop you from talking with God. God still wants to talk back to you wherever you are, whatever situation you're in. He said, "Well, who told you that you were naked"?
Now here's the thing about conscience. Conscience doesn't help you do right. That's the domain of the will. But it sure knows how to hammer you when you're done wrong. And Adam and Eve were hurting on the inside. They were tearing themselves apart on the inside. Conscience had been born in a real way and they recognized that they had fallen short and they had failed, and they felt alienated and separated and, in some ways, alone. But I do want to say a guilty conscience is not God's will, but it does mean at least you still have one. "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat"?
You see, God did not ask where Adam was to help God find Adam. God asked Adam where he was so Adam could locate himself. And this is why you need the word of God as a daily part of your life. Because it's not afraid to ask you the hard questions. Where are you? Not just geographically, but where are you really spiritually? Where are you emotionally? Where are you intellectually? Where are you in your life? But watch how the man answers. "Then the man said, 'The woman.'" God was talking to Adam about Adam. And every time God tries to talk to you about you, you bring up somebody else, what somebody else did, what somebody else said. And God's like, "I'm trying to talk to you". He said, "The woman you gave to be with me".
He shifted the blame and the conversation to the woman and God. How often do we shift our prayer life to things that really aren't even the point? What she did, he did is not the point. It's how you respond that God's concerned about. "The woman you gave to be with me". He shifted the blame, and men have been doing the same ever since. I got two amens on that. And then watch him, watch him dig in. "She". And I'm sure, man, "She, that woman". How many of y'all pray about that woman just like that? "She".
Real quiet, keep looking straight. "She gave me of the tree and I ate". Blaming only one person in marriage is like, you know what? Saying your side of the boat is sinking. Y'all be okay. Blaming one person in a marriage is like saying your side of the boat is sinking. Okay, y'all didn't get that? What that means, if one side's sinking, you're both sinking. You're in the same boat. You're in it together. It doesn't matter whose fault it was, you're both going down if you don't get it fixed.
"And the Lord God said to the woman," by the way, God still speaks to women. I felt something in the room when I said that. And he said, "What is this you have done"? I once asked my wife to embrace her mistakes and she hugged me. No, I'm just joking. I'm just joking, just joking, just joking. You see, in a godly home, the husband and wife are not supposed to compete with each other, but to help complete each other. And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me and I ate".
So the man blamed God and the woman and the woman took her cue and blamed the snake. You see, no single raindrop ever feels it's responsible for the flood. You see, we would learn a whole lot more from our mistakes if we were not so busy denying them. So the Lord had to step up. He said to the serpent, he recognized he wasn't getting anywhere with those two. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. But God's about to break the stalemate. And God begins to prophesy to the serpent. We're gonna skip to verse 15. And God says, now, he speaks to the actual creature, but then he speaks to the spirit that was in the creature. And now he's speaking to the serpent or Satan himself.
"And I will put enmity, discord, conflict between you and the woman," and watch this. This is why some of the rabbis used to think that this animal and Eve were at one time friends. Yeah. And you gotta be careful sometimes with some folks you befriend. "I will put enmity between you and the woman. And between your seed," watch this, "and her seed". Here's a big question. How many of us know women don't have seed? Did he say this because the ancients thought up? No, no, the ancients all understood that the seed came from the man. In fact, all those phallic singles and all that stuff in worship and harvest, all that comes from they understood where the seed was and the man produced the seed, but the woman was like the earth.
And the ancients understood this and know this. So why does he say that there'll be enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed? Because God was not surprised. He knew what Adam and Eve would do and he prophesied the virgin birth instantly after the Fall. He didn't even need a day to think about it. You see, your mistakes are not a surprise to God. They will never surprise God. God already has a plan if you come to him. You'll find it. But watch the plan. "He shall bruise your head," he's speaking to the snake or the serpent, the spirit.
And what he was saying is, and by the way, you don't have to go long in the Bible to find the cross or to find Jesus, but the voice of God is walking with, you know, bipedal, got two legs, walking in the garden. And obviously, you know, he's crunching leaves and all the rest of the stuff and they hear him coming. Obviously God had taken human form and a lot of this language here is anthropomorphic because God had taken human form to relate to Adam and Eve. You know that a picture's worth a thousand words, but I will tell you an example's worth 10,000 words.
And here, just a few verses into the Old Testament, it says, "And he shall bruise your head," speaking of the woman's seed. And what was being said here was that Satan would be fatally injured by the Messiah. But watch this. "And you shall bruise his heel". Why does he say his heel? Because that's the, you know, the devil couldn't do nothing with God in heaven. He can only attack God when he became a man. And a serpent would bite a heel because that's the part he could reach. You get what I'm saying? "And you shall bruise his" what? Heel, so Satan would be fatally injured by the Messiah, but the Messiah would be wounded by the snake.
Revelation tells us that before the foundation of the world, the Lamb of God was slain. God knew what our future would cause but created us anyway because he thought we were worth it. Amen. To the woman, he said, and this is the point we're gonna focus on today. God judged both the man and the woman in the places of their greatest contributions. If women stopped having babies, we cease to exist as a race. But likewise, if men stop working, we lose our safety and the protection that men are designed to bring because idleness and a lack of purpose causes man's criminality to go through the roof.
You wanna get rid of crime, give men and women jobs. Hear what I'm saying. Work does not harm a man. If you're really a man, it's part of your makeup, it's part of your strength, and it's part of your right for pride. Part of my challenge today is folks don't take pride in their work anymore. They don't care. They just want to get the check and get out of there. There's no sense of pride.
And yes, don't mishear me, a strong woman can do most things by herself, but a strong man won't let her. Thank you, Brother Craig. So he's speaking to the woman in the area of her strength, the area of her anointing, the area of her grace, the area of her gifting. "I will greatly multiply your sorrow in your conception. In pain, you shall bring forth children".
Now, if you read the Hebrew in Genesis 2:7, it says, "Adam was made," kind of like God made Adam, just boom, made Adam. In the Hebrew in Genesis 2:22, it says, "Eve was built". See, men are made, women are built. Men are made, women are built. God made the man, but it seems he took a little extra time with the women. But because of that, God had to humble all that beauty you wake up with every morning. Those hips, those lips, and those fingertips are more powerful than you ever imagined. So God had to put a check on it.