09 - The Curse 2010

Last time we closed with Satan’s attack on Eve. Let’s look at his method, his bag of tricks, for it is the same with us today:

Satan opened the discussion with a 3-fold doubt—all three of which were a direct attack against the Word of God, Eve’s only defense.

He first challenged the authorship of God’s Word.

“Has God said?” “How do you know it’s the Word of God? How do you know God said it? After all you weren’t even there when that Word was given.”

In her reply, Eve misquoted God’s Word, showing a carelessness that must have greatly and encouraged her foe. Then having questioned the authorship of the Word of God, and hence its authority,

The devil next challenged its accuracy.

“Yea, has God said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” “How do you know that is an accurate rendering of what was originally said? How do you know something has not been lost in transmission?”

And finally, the Devil attacked…

The acceptability of God’s Word.

God’s demands often conflict with our own desires. Satan knew this and directed Eve’s gaze to the forbidden tree. He made her see how good it was for food, now pleasant it was to the eyes, how much to be desired to make one wise. He persuaded her to act in independence of God, to be “mature,” to “do her own thing.”

Having begun with doubt, Satan followed with a denial. “You won’t die,” he said. This was a flat contradiction to what God has said. “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

The whole temptation hinged on belief—whose report would Eve believe?

Interestingly, in salvation, God brings the soul back to that very point of departure and insists on belief in God’s Word of promise.

Satan followed up the doubt and the denial with a delusion: “You will be as gods, knowing good and evil,” he said. The word “gods” is Elohim. “You shall be as God Himself,” promised a lying devil.

Satan was putting into Eve’s mind the same deluded thought that had once entered his own mind, and that had transformed him from the anointed cherub to the devil.

Eve fell, believing that eating the forbidden fruit would open her eyes to vast wisdom. She would dazzle her husband with newfound knowledge. On the heels of doubt, denial and delusion, Eve ate, setting the stage for Adam’s transgression—which was Satan’s top priority.

The downward path in Eve’s fall was steep. The enemy used the same old bag of tricks that the Apostle John lays out in 1 John 2:16:

“For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.”

We are told of Eve that “she saw,” that is, her gaze was directed toward what had been forbidden. The aim was to turn her look into a lust. Next, Eve saw that the tree was good for food (the lust of the flesh), that it was pleasant to the eyes (the lust of the eyes), and that it was desirable to make one wise (the pride of life).

With this three-pronged weapon, Satan successfully took her down, and has been using the same formula ever since.

Next, Eve’s desire became a decision. Satan cannot force. He can only lure, tempt, attract and suggest. But once the decision to succumb is made, the choice becomes a chain.

With that very first bite, she was his. Eve was a sinner. Jesus said that “He that commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). She had become ensnared by the tempter.

As we just read, Eve next approached Adam with the forbidden fruit and he ate as well. We read that “she gave” the fruit to her husband. The final aim of Satan was to turn the sinner into a seducer. Satan knew that Adam would not listen to his appeal, but that his wife could succeed where he could not.

But the Bible is clear that, unlike his wife, Adam was not deceived. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression” (1 Tim 2:14). Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. It is possible that, seeing the woman he loved in her fallen state, and knowing that he could not bring her back to a state of innocence, Adam deliberately stooped down to where she was to become like her.

If this is the case, Adam’s sin was more serious than Eve’s because he deliberately and knowingly followed his heart into disobedience, and in an idolatrous fashion placed his affection for Eve above his affection for God.

The consequences of their sin immediately unfolded in all its horror.

First, the Bible records “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew they were naked.” (3:7)

It is possible that, to this point, the first couple had been clothed with light. The Bible says that God covers Himself with light as with a garment (Psalms 104:2). And Jesus was likewise clothed at the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9:23). The Bible says that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

The moment they sinned, Adam and Eve saw the light go out. This must have been a truly horrifying experience! To know that you have made a decision that instantly alters everything around you. And it is the same with people today. To walk in sin is to walk in spiritual darkness. When we sin, the light goes out. For instance:

”Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him” (1 John 2:9-10).

The death of the spirit within them caused the light to be extinguished and, suddenly, the physical side of their being was thrust into a prominence not before known. They knew they were naked. This was the knowledge for which they had sold their place in paradise, their daily fellowship with God, and their prospects of eternal life.

But the consequences that fell due to their sin had only just begun. They next “Sewed for themselves fig leaves, and made themselves aprons” (3:7). This was man’s first pathetic attempt to cover up his sin. Fig leaves represent man’s best effort, in whatever form it takes, to hide sin. This might work between them, but our best efforts never hide our sin from the piercing eyes of God.

Next comes a pathetic and sad sight. The first couple fled from the Presence of God. They heard God approaching, walking in the garden in the cool of the day. For the first time in their lives they feared God.

Before their sin the voice of God had thrilled them with joy. But now they were afraid of Him, not from reverence but from terror. In their darkened condition they actually believed they could hide from God. Their fall was complete.

Next, from the inner sanctum of the garden came the searching voice of God, “Where are you?” The sobering, searching question stabbed into Adam’s soul like a fiery sword. And the same question comes searching into the heart of every person on earth at one time or another: “Where are you? What are you doing? Why so far from Me?”

Adam was lost, that’s where he was! With no escape, he appeared from amongst the bushes to face his Maker.

The First Blame Game

Like all of us, Adam seems to have had great difficulty in making a clean confession of his guilt. First, he offered an explanation:

“I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (3:10). Rather than the bright, honest, straightforward, upright man previously seen in the garden, we find a shifty, devious, reluctant, excuse-making creature. Adam now displays in full view the fallen heart that Jeremiah describes as being “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” (Jer. 17:9)

Next, Adam produced an excuse. God went straight to the heart of the matter: “Who told you that you were naked?” But rather than confess his sin, he promptly blames Eve. “The woman who you gave me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I ate” (3:11-12). There is hardly a sorrier scene in all of scripture, or a meaner one. First, Adam blames God. “The woman you gave to me.” Next, he blames the woman. “She gave me the fruit of the tree.” And then finally he confesses his own part and says, “I ate it.”

The fact that Adam could first blame God for his own sin, and then drag the woman in as the culprit when, just a short while before, he had ecstatically exclaimed: “Bone of my bone” on first seeing her, is testimony to the frightening effects of sin on human character.

But Adam wasn’t alone in the blame game. Although the woman didn’t try to implicate God, she did blame the serpent: “The serpent deceived me,” she said. “And I did eat.”

The Consequences of the fall now fall

God’s sentence fell in three parts. First, judgment fell on the serpent, then on Eve, and finally on Adam. The first part of the sentence involved war.

14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. 15 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.” (3:14-15)

Commentator John Phillips writes of this judgment, “For the serpent, the creature that had lent its body to the evil one to be the instrument through which temptation could come, there was degradation to the dust.

The silent, writhing motion of the serpent to this day forms a symbol of waves and coils, written in the dust of the earth, written in lines full of repulsion and menace, written to remind us of the curse. Men look at the serpent with loathing, horror and fear.”

But the curse went further to Satan himself. God didn’t address him, no questions were asked whatsoever. He judged him and declared war with him then and there. “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.”

Genesis 3:15 has been called the John 3:16 of the Old Testament.

With these words, Adam and Eve heard the gospel message for the very first time. They lifted up their fallen heads with fresh hope to the very first prophecy of scripture. This amazing prophecy encompassed both of the comings of Jesus Christ.

The second coming of Christ to crush the serpent’s head was pronounced first, for the triumph outshines the tragedy.

“He (the seed of the woman) will strike your head…”

The bruising of Christ’s heel was mentioned next, for only by means of the cross could the ultimate victory come.

“…and you (the serpent) will strike his heel.”

In his sentence of doom, Satan discovered that he had actually brought about his own ruin. He had fallen ambush to God’s plan prepared for him from the beginning.

While seeking to avenge himself on God for casting him out of heaven, the devil had opened the way for God to settle things once and for all. The very planet upon which Satan had attacked the apple of God’s creation would become the place for the final battle and his ultimate defeat!

The “seed of the woman” would put an end to sin and Satan. Of course, this all was fulfilled when the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary and “that which was conceived in her (the seed of the woman) was of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 1:20)

The second part of God’s sentence involved woe. “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” (Vs. 16)

There would be sorrow—sorrow centering in the area of a woman’s greatest fulfillment, in the bringing forth of children.

And there would also be subservience. The “one flesh” relationship which she enjoyed with her husband would be subject to the strain of competing wills. “You will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” The woman would have to learn submission in spite of her own strong will.

Next time: The judgment upon Adam and the Approaching Storm