Yesterday we started a discussion around the fall of man from my latest sermon entitled “Unintended Consequences”. If you missed the first part of the discussion it can be found

HERE

Here is pt. 2 of that discussion:

Read Ge. 2:15- 3:19

At the moment of their disobedience (eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as shown in Ge. 3) something changed for Adam and Eve. Call it genetic. Call it spiritual. Nobody really knows, and truth be told it was probably a bit of both things, but something changed in the moment they disobeyed. They lost their significance, their sufficiency and their security, BUT they also lost something else as well. Adam and Eve at the point of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lost their “Assurance”

Much is made of the fact that before the fall Adam and Eve were naked and after the fall they needed clothes. Many people say that God did this to keep them from lusting after one another. Well that may be a problem today but I don’t believe that was Adam or Eve’s problem back then. First, they were married. Second the issue mentioned around nakedness in the Garden is not lust but shame Ge. 2:25 says “they were both naked in the Garden and felt no shame.” The reason they sewed fig leaves together in Ge. 3:7 was because suddenly they were ashamed.

Shame is a lack of self-assurance. The word used for shame in Ge. 2:25 is the word “Buwsh” which means “to be disappointed in yourself in front of another person.”

Before the fall Adam and Eve did not judge themselves or feel unworthy in front of each other. After eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their eyes were opened. Suddenly they began to judge everything around them and instead of seeing the good in things they started seeing the bad in things.

All our disappointment in who we are comes from the fall.  Every time you call yourself  “fat”, “ugly”,  “weak” or “stupid”, every time you look in the mirror and want to cover up some blemish you are experiencing the power of the fall.

God’s intended world had people filled with confidence and assurance in who they were created to be. His thought was that men would succeed at whatever they put their hands to and feel confident in themselves as they did it. Instead, the fall has us constantly fighting the fear that we are not enough and that at any moment the true us will show up and we will fail.

On a scale of one to ten how much has the fall affected you in your self-assurance?