Genesis 3.14-19-The Consequences of the Fall of Adam

Sunday August 28, 2005

Genesis: Genesis 3:14-19-The Consequences of the Fall of Adam

Lesson # 17

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 3:1.

This morning we will study the consequences of Adam and his wife failure to obey the Lord’s prohibition to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is recorded in Genesis 3:14-19.

Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Genesis 3:2, “The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.’”

Genesis 3:3, “but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”

Genesis 3:4, “The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die!’”

Genesis 3:5, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:6, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”

Genesis 3:8, “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”

Genesis 3:9, “Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”

Genesis 3:10, “He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’”

Genesis 3:11, “And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’”

Genesis 3:12, “The man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.’”

Genesis 3:13, “Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”

Genesis 3:14, “The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life.”

The fact that the Lord pronounced a curse on the serpent does not indicate direct culpability on its part since it is not a moral rational creature that can make decisions but rather this curse was a perpetual reminder to the human race of the instrument of its fall and of the final destruction of Satan himself.

God was not unjust in pronouncing this curse upon an innocent animal since He is sovereign and has created each animal to fulfill a specific role in life (Rm. 9:21).

God had made the serpent a member of a species which are described in Genesis 1:21 as “those, which crawl” and “creepers-crawlers” in Genesis 1:24.

The entire animal kingdom fell under a curse as a result of Adam’s sin even though the animals had not sinned themselves and this was because they were under Adam’s rulership and it was by his sin that death came into the world, infecting everything in that dominion.

Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”

The seed of the serpent is not literal since we have already established that Satan disguised himself by indwelling the serpent and neither is it referring to fallen angels for such an interpretation does not fit the context and Satan does not father demons.

The seed of the serpent does not refer to unregenerate humanity (unbelievers) since the phrase “your seed” is used in contrast to the phrase “her seed,” which refers to one individual, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the phrase “your seed” refers to one individual, namely, the Antichrist who will be the ruler of a ten-nation confederacy constituting a Revived Roman Empire, during Daniel’s 70th week, which is also called by theologians as the “Tribulation Period.”

“Her Seed” refers to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the “Last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) and if so, then, “your seed” refers to a single individual as well.

“He (Jesus Christ) shall bruise you (Satan) on the head” is the first prophecy concerning the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ would defeat Satan at the cross by being obedient to the Father’s will with His death on the cross.

The prophecy of Genesis 3:15 is the “seed plot” of the Virgin Birth and Incarnation of the Son of God (Isa. 7:14; Mt. 1:23; John 1:14; 1 Tim. 3:16) as well as the “seed plot” of the Redemption and Salvation of mankind as well as the defeat of Satan, which is developed in further detail in the rest of the Bible (Gal. 3:13; Eph. 1:7; Col. 2:14; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 Jn. 3:8).

“You (Satan) shall bruise Him (Christ) on the heel” is a symbolic or figurative reference to the Lord’s suffering and death on the cross, which the Father used as the instrument to destroy the works of the devil.

What Satan did to the Lord at the cross was only temporary and did not defeat the Lord but what the Lord did to Satan at the cross was to achieve total and complete victory over Satan since His death on the cross redeemed mankind and demonstrated the love of God for all men, which refutes Satan’s argument that God does not love His creatures.

Genesis 3:16, “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

God’s judgment on Eve was to increase her pain in childbearing and that her desire or impulse would be toward her husband and he would rule over her, not as a tyrant but in the same sense as the sun rules the day (Gen. 1:16).

This, of course, was not God’s original intention but now in Christ the negative aspects of this are removed and the husband and wife are restored to a healthy partnership where the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:22-33) and the wife is to obey and respect her husband as to the Lord.

Because, Eve chose to disobey God and did not eat from the tree of life resulting in immortality, she would now have to bear children, which in one sense was a curse but in another sense opened the door to redemptive history.

The privilege of bearing and raising born-again children delivers women from their loss of leadership at the Fall (1 Tim. 2:12-15).

Remember, both Adam and Eve were modeled and created in the image and likeness of God according to Genesis 1:26-27 and together were to rule over every living creature and to rule over the earth and subdue it according to Genesis 1:28.

Eve’s disobedience changed that but the woman’s position of rulership is restored through the baptism of the Spirit, which takes place at the moment she exercises faith alone in Christ alone and gives her equal privilege and equal opportunity to glorify God.

Genesis 3:17, “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.”

“Cursed is the ground” means the basic material of the physical creation and the elements themselves, the “dust of the earth,” out of which all things had been formed and produced were brought under the bondage of decay and disintegration.

Genesis 3:18, “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field.”

Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The earth would no longer cooperate with Adam because he sinned and will be insubordinate to Adam because he was insubordinate to God and obeyed his wife.

“By the sweat of your face you will eat bread” means that Adam would have to perform hard labor in order to get the earth to produce food for him.

Work was originally designed by the Lord to be a blessing for man but after the Fall, it became a curse (Gen. 3:17-19) but this curse is lifted in Christ.

“Till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust and to dust you shall return” refers to the eventual death of Adam’s biological life meaning his physical body.

This curse on Adam also included the entire human race, both male and female, of which Adam is the “federal” head of the old creation and is removed through faith in Christ who is the “federal” head of the “new” creation.

1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”

So the Lord put a curse upon man and on his entire environment and would not only force him to recognize the seriousness of his sin as well as his helplessness to deliver himself and his dominion from eventual destruction but also it would force him to recognize that Satan’s tempting promises had been nothing but lies.

This curse on the First Adam will ultimately be lifted when the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ returns with church, the sons of God, at His 2nd Advent to deliver Israel from Antichrist and the Tribulational armies in order to establish His millennial reign (Rom. 8:18-22).