Message Date: January 19, 2025

Longing for Eden, Pt 2: Delivered from Exile

Victory Life Church — Sunday, January 19, 2025

To be human is to crave a sense of meaning—that our lives mean something. We long for life to be in a state of wholeness and peace. We long for Eden, the state where life is in God’s presence and there is purpose to our work and meaning in our relationships.

The Eden Ideal: to be in an interdependent relationship with God and each other, tasked with the purpose of spreading God’s goodness in caring for and cultivating the garden of Eden into all creation.

“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” ~ St. Augustine

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Shame and Fear: Death and Exile

I want to look closer at what led to our exile from Eden.

Genesis 3:7–15 (NLT) 7 At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. 8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

What is shame and fear? How does it lead to “death” and “exile”?

Shame can be experienced as a deep, painful feeling of being fundamentally flawed, unworthy, or unlovable. This can be described as “toxic” shame, which has a deep and damaging effect on people, spiraling into feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, and isolation.

This can be compared to shame that isn’t toxic, sometimes connected with a sense of “guilt,” which relates to feeling bad about a specific wrongful action or behavior. This is a good thing in a broken world of sin. It’s appropriate to feel bad about what we have done when we mess up. That feeling should drive us toward reconnecting with the person we have wronged.

Toxic shame, however, is more about feeling bad about oneself at a core identity level and can distort that person’s sense of identity, internalizing that there’s something inherently wrong with who we are. This kind of shame often drives a person to hide, cover up, or withdraw from others. In many cases, people may internalize toxic shame so much that they believe that they are irredeemable or beyond the possibility of love and acceptance.

This kind of shame drives us into a relational exile. This kind of shame makes us cover ourselves with foolish “disguises” and makes us hide from God and others.

Shame and fear make us cover up and hide from God and each other. (Death/Exile)

There is too much to say about fear here, but two main fears originate in these verses. One is the fear of the unknown, specifically the fear that comes as the feeling we experience when we recognize that we are not in control. When we reached for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we attempted to seize control of the rulership of our lives. We rejected God’s authority and, in a sense, tried to be “like God,” gods unto ourselves. It does not take long to realize we lack the capacity to be God. We recognize that much of our lives are out of our control. There is more to life that is “unknown” than we could have ever imagined. This recognition brings fear, dread, or that low-grade fever of anxiety.

The second kind of fear that is experienced here is the fear of punishment. There is an immediate recognition that they have done wrong, and so they cover themselves up and try to hide from God. When God comes to be with the humans as he would normally, he asks, “Where are you?” This is not an inquiry of the ignorant. It is a reference point question. Adam needed to know where he was. He admitted that he was afraid and ashamed.

God is heartbroken. He curses the snake and the ground but does not curse humans. He simply assigns them the consequences of their failure. This results in humanity being exiled from the garden and being cut off from the source of life. But not without hope. God promises that there will be an offspring who will crush evil but also be crushed by it (Genesis 3:15).

Jesus

Genesis 3:15 (NLT) And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Humans are not broken machines that need to be fixed. Broken humans need healing.

Isaiah 53:4–5 (ESV) 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Romans 5:8 (ESV) but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Grace—the unconditional love and acceptance of God—offers a radical counter to the debilitating effects of toxic shame. Grace invites us to experience the love of God manifested in Jesus’ forgiveness, acceptance, and transformation. Because of Jesus, we come to understand that we are loved despite our flaws, and this knowledge can begin to heal the wounds of shame.

Galatians 4:4–7 (ESV) 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Toxic shame would lie to us, saying that we are irredeemable or beyond the possibility of love and acceptance. Yet Jesus proves otherwise. Because of his redemption, we are restored to the family of God. In Christ, our identity is not a “sinner” but a son or daughter. We are not worthless or irredeemable. Jesus has redeemed us and restored us.

Conclusion

Colossians 1:13–14 (ESV) 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The forgiveness of sins through Jesus delivers us out of exile.

Jesus doesn’t just “save” us from our sins but “heals” the damages done to us by our sins. ]

The life of sin, which drives us deeper into shame and fear, is “dead” in Christ. His death is my death. Our new life in Christ looks different than the one dominated by sin. The kind of life that is no longer marked by shame or fear is a life surrendered in complete allegiance and loyalty to Jesus, surrendered to the one who redeemed us out of the domain of darkness and delivered us into his kingdom and a new family. He restores our identity as a son or daughter whom he loves unconditionally.