Study 2: Leader's Guide

Rebellion in the World

If you did not discuss the last question from Study 1, remember to start with it. Also, it would be good to recap the previous study (either just summarizing the main points of the last study or asking your members to try and recap).

Intro question:

This starter question is aimed to help your members just explore some theories of the origin of evil/sin, or even to help you assess whether they believe that evil is an intruder in a good world or if evil/sin is merely part of life and will always be part of life. Study 1 (and the recap) should help them recognise that the world today is not how it was created to be.

Question 1:

Straight forward question: man, woman, serpent, God.

Question 2:

Again, very straight forward question. The woman added the warning about touching the tree.

Question 3:

This question is slightly tricky as you might need to highlight the situation that the man and woman are in. An important thing to remember is that the man and woman have always lived in a perfect world, one that is good and unblemished, in complete obedience and whole relationship with God. What the serpent was tempting them with was not that the fruit would make them know what is good and what is evil (remember that they had never experienced evil or know of it) but that they could decide what was good and what was evil. This is what it meant for them to eat the fruit and disobey God: they could stop living under God’s rules and make their own. The serpent tempted them with supposed “freedom” and “authority”.

Question 4:

This is a straight forward question. The point of this is to identify the outright action of disobedience against God.

Question 5:

a)     The man and woman hide from God as they are afraid. The man seemingly blames God for creating the woman who has caused him to disobey God.

b)    Whilst they were once partners, the man now blames the woman for his error and the woman blames the serpent. Their relationship is now broken.

Question 6:

God makes a statement that essentially declares the consequences of their disobedience. Their disobedience has significant effects for man, woman, serpent and the world.

a)     Verses 14-15. There are possible tones of a messianic passage here (v15). It might be useful to point out the prophetic statement here, in some ways pre-empting the coming of Jesus. Nevertheless, don’t make too big an issue of it as it may be confusing with the hostility between a future offspring and serpent.

b)    Verse 16. The pain of pregnancy is not just physical here, but is also the emotional as there is now an urgency to procreate (since death is now a threat whilst it was not before). The declaration that the husband will control the wife is not a declaration of how things should be (this is not justification for man to abuse the woman or that woman is secondary to the man), but is a declaration of the consequences of our disobedience. Essentially, this is how things are going to be rather than this is how things should be.

c)     Verse 17-19. Whilst the creation previously provided food readily for the man and the woman (refer to Genesis 2), it now requires sweat and toil. Again, the threat of death is imminent and hence the search for food becomes desperate and harder.

d)    The banishment of the man and woman from the garden of Eden (and hence access to the tree of life) means that all people are now subject to death. We all suffer from the consequences and we all face death at the end of our lives. The world we live in is broken, filled with pain and suffering.

Question 7:

The major gist here is that the relationships that were once good and whole are now broken and suffering. People are disconnected from God, we are disconnected from each other and creation has been exploited.

Question 8:

Whilst everything seems dismal, we see some signs of hope in this passage. God clothed the man and woman even though they had betrayed God. In some ways, death here is a good thing. If people were to live forever in rebellion in the garden, it would be like living forever disconnected from God (i.e. hell). Contingently, death is release from hell although death is still a tragedy. With verse 15, in many ways, we see hope there as we look forward to the victory gained over death through Jesus.

Homework:

The passages show the spread of sin. From the first murder to a unified effort in perpetrating that God is less than who God is in the Babel story. It might be helpful when going through the homework to just briefly discuss “sin”. By now, everyone should be quite settled with the idea that the world is not as it should be because people disobeyed God in Genesis 3. It would be good to explain ‘sin’ in terms of what happened in Genesis 3 as well as the consequences of it, which is the state of brokenness and disconnect that we live in. As much as possible, you should base your answers on the passages and not offer too many long and complex statements filled with jargon.