Genesis 3:16-19

Sermon from Sunday, March 1,2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

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Do you ever stop and ask yourself “Why am I like this?”

After all these years, there is something I just can’t seem to learn. No matter how many times it has blown up for me, I still believe  that I can carry absolutely everything in one trip, by myself.  It doesn’t matter how much there is to carry. I’ll have several full bags to bring in from the car. Instead of making multiple trips, or asking for a second set of hands, I’ll pile them all on to my arms, the straps cutting off the circulation, or I’ll carry a pile of boxes stacked up precariously, one on top of the other, balanced all on one hand while I grab my keys with the other.

Every single time I think,"this will be fine."

It is never fine.

My favorite time I did this was when I was unloading groceries for a mission dinner in the parking lot at a church where I served in Ohio. One of the too many bags I was carrying slipped out my hands. A large jar fell, hit the tail gate of my car, and then  broke open sending spaghetti sauce all over my car and the ground.  For the next hour I was crouched down on the pavement, trying to scoop up tomato sauce without getting it all over my clothes. All because I couldn’t take two trips. 

I thought I was making progress last week. I conceded to using a cart as I moved several boxes through our church building here. But in my unwavering commitment to making one trip I had put way too many boxes on the cart, and then, as I turned a sharp corner, disaster. Boxes and contents everywhere. 

What continues to amaze me is that  I never learn. I keep doing it the exact same way.

There are so many better choices. I could ask for help. I could make two trips. I could choose literally any other plan.  But no. One trip. By myself. Every time. You would think after the tomato sauce incident,  there would be growth. There has not been growth.

At some point I have to wonder: Why am I like this?

Maybe you do something like this too, in your own unique flavor. 

You keep staying up too late, even though you know exactly how that will feel tomorrow. You eat the flamin’ hot cheetohs, even though you know it gives you a stomachache. All of us do this with things that are much, much more important. 

Maybe you keep having the same argument with your spouse. 

 You keep worrying about everything and just can’t let go. 

You keep biting your tongue when you know what needs to be said. 

You fall into the same behaviors or temptations that you know aren’t good for you. And could even hurt other people. But you keep going back to them. 

Then we look at the world and wonder why are we like this?

Why do we, as a people, keep repeating the same mistakes? Why does history feel so repetitive?  Why does it feel like things are going backward? 

Why am I like this? Why are we like this?

This is exactly where Genesis meets us.  Because Genesis 3 is not just a story about some early humans a long time ago. Genesis 3 is us. We are living out Adam and Eve’s story, over and over again.

The Bible starts out so promising. One of the very first things we are told is that we are made in the image of God.  You and I, we are made in God’s image. That’s still true. But we keep settling for less. 

Last week we looked at the first part of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, in the original temptation narrative. Things are going pretty well for the first humans. They really have everything they need. God tells them one thing, one thing, they need to not do. Don’t eat from that tree.  God did not create humans as puppets. We are given real agency in our lives. We really can make our own choices. So those first humans look around, and decide the best course of action is, of course. . . to eat fruit from that one tree. Why are we like this? 

After they eat from the tree, God meets them in the garden. Dave looked at some of that conversation between God and Adam and Eve last week. There is a lot of blame, but also some beautiful moments where God says “where are you?” and when God gives them garments because they are naked and suddenly embarrassed. Then God says this:

Genesis 3:16-19:

16 To the woman he said,

“I will make your pangs in childbirth exceedingly great;    in pain you shall bring forth children,yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

17 And to the man  he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife    and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18  thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19  By the sweat of your face    you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,    for out of it you were taken;you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Adam and Eve wanted control over their lives, and now they’ve got it.

But that choice was not without consequences.

God says now their relationships will be distorted by patriarchy. Their work will be difficult and painful. At the end of it all, they will return to the dust. 

Before we go on, we need to be careful here. These verses are not God establishing some new plan. It’s not a prescription dictating for what life should be like from now on. God is not saying patriarchy and pain and toil and death, these things are good. Instead, these verses are a description of what things will often look like as the story of Adam repeats itself in the generations to come. This idea of teachings that are descriptive of what the world is like versus prescriptive of what should happen for all time will come up again as we work our way through the Bible. Description not prescription is what is happening here. If these things were God’s original intention, surely they would have been established just a few verse prior in the creation narrative, when God creates and ordains and says “this is good.” Here God telling the truth about life when we try to live without God. We have the ability to make choices, and God is clear that there are consequences when we make the wrong ones. God also knew we would do this over and over again.

Shirley Guthrie is a theologian that wrote a well known book on systematic theology, and he writes this: “Human beings themselves are monotonously the same, repeating over and over again the little drama in the garden of Eden.” 

Genesis tells us the answer to “why are we like this?”

Because we are human, and monotonously the same, predictably repeating the same story over and over again.

Then it would be fair to ask “ Then now what?” 

If we are so predictably bent on messing things up, is the whole thing just hopeless?

No. 

Guthrie goes on to say “We must talk with dead seriousness about ourselves as sinners, but we must not suggest that our sinfulness is the basic truth about what we are. The basic truth is not that we are sinners but that we are human beings created in God’s image. Sin distorts, twists, corrupts and contradicts the truth, but it does not change us into something other than what God created us to be. Sin is not stronger than God.” 

We settle for less. But we are made in the image of God. 

We’re in this project where we are working our way through the whole Bible, and we often will look at other verses to give us more context on the passage we are focused on. So I thought, let’s look at when else Adam’s story comes up. Interestingly, the next time we have a significant encounter with the story of Adam isn’t in the Old Testament at all. Adam and Eve’s story doesn’t come up much in the history of Israel, outside of the occasional genealogy. But much later, after the Old Testament stories, after Jesus’ birth and  life and ministry and resurrection, young churches are beginning to be formed. Paul, in one of his letters, asks the same question we started with, in Romans 7:15, when he says:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Or in other words, Why am I like this? In this same letter, Paul writes about Adam, as he tries to help them see just how foundational a change has occurred with Jesus. 

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— 13 for sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come.

We’ll talk more about the law Paul mentions when we get there. But for today, Paul looks back on Adam’s story, and sees the beginning of the patterns of sin that continued from one generation to the next, how we repeat the story over and over. Then he writes one of the most hopeful words in this passage:

15 But

Yes, we are a mess. Yes, Sin and death are a universal problem. But the repeating of Adam’s story is not the end. Because

the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.

In other words, we may continue to fall into the patterns of Adam. But God outmatched the humanity of Adam with the person of Jesus. What Jesus would do would far and above overshadow that first mistake. 

So, why I am like this?

Because I’m human. just like Adam and Eve were. So I’m going to continue to make mistakes. Can we fix that entirely?

No, not on our own. But God has already acted. In Christ, the work is done.

If Adam represents the pattern we keep repeating,  Jesus breaks that pattern, on our behalf. It doesn’t mean we won’t still mess it up. But it does mean that everything has changed. 

Paul talks about Adam one other time, in a letter to the church at Corinth: 

1 Corinthians 15:22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 

47 The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will  also bear the image of the one of heaven.

This passage comes in the context of a longer discussion about true resurrection, which we’ll talk more about later. But it also points back to Genesis 3. Remember in our reading today from Genesis 3, when it said: “until you return to the ground,    for out of it you were taken;you are dust,    and to dust you shall return.” Now we have in Paul’s letter "just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven."

Genesis says:“You are dust.”

Paul says: “Yes, but that dust is not your destiny.”

That description of what life would be like in Genesis 3? 

It’s changed. Yes, we return to dust. But that’s not the whole story.  

You are made in the image of God. You bear the image not only of the dust but of the one of heaven. And we keep settling for just dust. 

So now we find ourselves back in the garden, facing the choices, and our patterns and temptations, again.I can’t tell you exactly what that means for you.

I know for me, one of those is learning to ask for help, not just with carrying things. (But yes, with that too). But really with my whole life. Letting other people in, admitting I need other people, which I’m bad at. Letting God in, instead of trying to earn grace on my own. Which I’m also bad at. The little patterns in my life like physically carrying too many things are an embarrassingly accurate snapshot of the things God is working on in my spiritual and emotional life.  It’s so easy for me to settle for less, for what I can do by myself But what if instead I let God change me and show me what can happen when I do?

I don’t know what your patterns are, the way you repeat the story of the garden, but I know you have them. I know you know what they are. What if you let God into those with you? What if you asked God “why am I like this?” and then let God work on you? God has something better for you, if you’re open to it. 

Then, the other question we started with: Why are we like this?

Why is the world like this, and what do we do with the sin we see out there?

What do we do with the violence? The horrific things we see happening to people?

We say things like that could never happen today. And then it does. Again.

What do we do when the atrocities of history seem to repeat themselves no matter how much progress we make?

First we can change the ways we contribute to it, of course.

But what about the sin that feels bigger than us?

It’s enough to make us want to just give up. Or eat some flaming hot cheetos. 

Remember what Guthrie wrote about sin?  Sin is powerful. But it is not stronger than God.

Not even the big sin that we see in the world right now. 

Sin is loud. Sin is destructive. But it’s not the final word.

That can be hard to believe that sometimes. Dealing with the mess in our lives is one thing. That brokenness out there? What can one person possibly do? I have to admit, as much as I would love to think I could carry all of the brokenness of the world in one trip and fix it all by myself, that I can’t. We can’t fix it all. Some of it takes people with a lot more power than any of us have. Ultimately the foundational problems of sin in the world are bigger than any of us. That’s why we need Jesus.  But that doesn’t let us entirely off the hook to do something. Apparently the people in Corinth were feeling discouraged about the world too. And Paul writes this to them:

1 Corinthians 15: 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

In other words: Keep going. 

Those little things you do, in your life, that you think won’t matter?

They do. Your work, it’s not in vain. 

We may not be able to fix the sin of the whole world.

The patterns of the garden at a global level are way beyond our control.

But what if we can do something for one person, here? 

That’s worth something. 

So be steadfast. Be immovable. Excel in the work of the Lord. 

And let other people help you. 

That’s where we’ll stop for today.

But next time, we’ll pick up the pace in Genesis as we get into the stories outside of Eden, starting with a murder.