The Curse
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Genesis 3:13-24
Genesis 3:13-24
Summarize what happened from the beginning of chapter three until verse 13 of the text this morning
The serpent was not just a talking snake
Adam allowed the serpent into the garden
Adam allowed, through his silence to allow the serpent to deceive his wife
Eve ate of the fruit and gave some to Adam
Then, when God confronted them about this, they both refused to take responsibility
We talked about the importance of taking responsibility for our mistakes and asking for forgiveness.
We also talked about not paying attention to temptation leading to sin
We have the authority on Jesus to reject sin
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1. Our most vital authority is to call upon the Name of Salvation.
This morning, We will talk about the consequences of the events that unfolded in the Garden
V.13- God asks Eve why she disobeyed. “What is this thing you have done?”
Why have you disobeyed?
Why have you chosen to not trust in my Word?
Eve attempts to pass the responsibility to the serpent
Rather that admitting the mistake, she chose to place the blame on another.
V.14- God pronounces a judgement over the serpent.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
This was an incredible blow to the serpent
God judged this creature to be the lowest of all creation
Considering who the devil thought he was, it makes this curse all the more powerful.
Turn to Isaiah 14:12-15
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.
This was the attitude of the devil
This was how he saw himself
He devised to rise above the stars of God
To sit enthroned on the mount of assembly
the devil sought to make himself like the Most High God
in his pride, the devil was cast out of heaven
We can see that the curse God placed upon the enemy was sever
God declared that the devil would be lower than all the other created things
It would crawl on its belly
It would be the lowest of the low because of its pride
God cursed the serpent because it deceived His children
the serpent deceived Adam and Eve with the same prideful desire it had in its own heart
The serpent told them that if they ate of the fruit, they would be like God
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2. The enemy introduced pride into the heart of humanity.
The introduction of pride caused Adam and Eve to take their eyes off of the Lord
They fell to the same desire of the serpent, to be like God
Turn to Proverbs 16
The book of Proverbs tells us this in chapter 16 verse 18:
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3. Proverbs 16:18 NIV: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Haughty means arrogant, superior or disdainful
If we have a haughty spirit, this means that we look down on others.
We can so easily fall into this same trap
When we think that we do not need God
When we think that we can do it on our own
When we think that we can neglect the instruction we can find in His Word
When we do these things, we set ourselves up for a fall
This is why so often we have the instruction throughout the Bible to be humble of heart
God reminds us in His Word that the moment that we water the pride of the self, we will reap the fruit of destruction.
Turn back to Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
These words are a fulfillment of a prophecy that is for now and for the not yet
Let me explain
The you God is referring to is the serpent, the devil
Because the devil caused sin to enter into the hearts of God’s children
there will be enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman
Enmity means hostility, violence, aggression.
The text is referring to Jesus
God is pointing to the the One who will and has crushed the head of the serpent.
This is a promise for the now.
It is for the now because Jesus has already won the victory
Jesus has already crushed the head of the enemy
He has already made a way for His children to be restored
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4. We can stand in the victory of Jesus!
This is a promise for the now.
We can trust that He has overcome the enemy
We can rely on Him to continually lead us toward the peace of God.
We do not need to wait to claim this victory
Our faith gives us the promise of Redemption immediately
This is also a promise that is for the not yet
We look to the day when the Lord will return to put an end to sin and death forever.
We look forward to the day when the evil will be cast into the lake of fire.
V 16
To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
A consequence of sin for the woman is painful childbirth
Sin caused something that is a beautiful gift to become painful
Women are given the ability to bear life in their bodies.
It is a design of God given only to biological women
Sin caused this natural process to be difficult
Second half of V. 16: Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.
This verse is interpreted in numerous ways. For many commentators, it is even skipped over.
I like what Mary Elisabeth Baxter says about this verse
Mary Elisabeth Baxter (1837-1926)
She was a prolific author who worked as editor of the “Christian Herald” in London. She was a Bible commentator. Along with Mary, her husband Michael founded a home to care for the people who suffered from physical and mental aliments. Mary write this regarding verse 16.
“Eve had become, not a helpmeet, but a hindrance to her husband. Adam had become, not a protector, but an accuser to his wife; sin and selfishness came in together, and the seeds of disunion were sown which were to bring forth the harvest of earth's sorrow. And when God questioned the woman:
"What is this that thou hast done?" she said: "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." (Gen 3:13.)
It is a sorry history; but oh, what a picture of many a household where self is ruling! How often, when a loss occurs in business, and the husband is deeply mortified, the wife will speak bitter words of reproach: "If you had only done as I advised you, you would not have ruined us all." Or the husband will bitterly retort: "If only you had not been so extravagant, things would never have come to this pass; you have yourself to thank for it." How often when a son or a daughter brings shame and grief upon their parents, bitter words of recrimination and retaliation are spoken! The wife, given to be a helpmeet, a blessing to her husband, to win him back when he has wandered, only galls the open wound; and the history of fallen Adam and Eve is constantly repeated even in the houses of God's children!
Regarding v 16: the most concise way to interpret it is to say that because of sin, we are afflicted to be in conflict with one another
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5. Because of sin, we are afflicted to be in conflict with one another.
This is something that we have to recognize
Remember when we talked about ezer kenedego: our responsibility was to watch over one another.
The enemy wants us to fight with one another
The enemy wants us to be in conflict
Knowing this is half the battle
we can ask God to help us respond in a way that is productive
Turn to John 13:33-35
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We are to love one another as our Savior loved us.
Jesus tells us that this is our witness
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6. By our love all men and women will know that we are disciples of Jesus.
Our testimony of Christs love will serve as a witness to the truth
we must try to allow our very lives be a living witness to the Gospel
Now I am not saying that we will never have conflicts
We are people in a fallen world
What I am saying is
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7. In times of conflict, rely on Jesus to help you remain in control.
The enemy wants us to lose control so that we bring calamity to the situation.
In times of conflict, rely on Jesus to help you remain in control.
We have the opportunity to ask God to help us respond in a way that is righteous
Examine the state out our world
So many people are so quick to become angry and act on that anger
V. 17-19
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The consequence of sin brought into the world by Adam is that the very ground is cursed.
Adam would need to toil for his food
Because of sin, thorns. thistles and weeds would spring up
Adam would be reminded daily of the mistake he made by falling into temptation
We have a number of farmers and people who garden in this congregation. I do not have to tell you that you do not have to plant a weed.
weeds just show up
From my experience, most of gardening is removing weeds
keeping vermin from eating the crop
We tried, one year I was intend on growing something. I fenced in our garden with chicken wire. Still no success. I think we may have been able to harvest a few leaves of spinach.
Thank you to our farmers for combating the curse of sin which plagues the ground
We are grateful and well fed because of you efforts
God tells Adam that by the sweat of his face he will eat until Adam returns to the ground.
Not only would Adam toil to eat, Adam would also suffer death
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8. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
The consequence of sin is separation from God.
Because Adam and Eve fell victim to sin, they suffered a consequence that was not designed to be part of creation
Sin is an intruder in God’s Kingdom
God needed to Redeem humanity, which leads into the verses that close out chapter 3
Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
If you remember at the beginning of the chapter after Adam and Eve sinned, they recognized separation from God
They were able to see there sin in relation to God
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil did open their eyes.
It opened their eyes to see how far they had fallen from God
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9. Eating the fruit opened their eyes to see the horror of sin.
They were naked and ashamed because they saw the evil of sin as opposed to the purity of God
They decided to make garments of leaves to cover their nakedness.
They thought this man made covering would be enough to hide the sin from God.
Sin that caused a rift between humanity and Almighty God needed to be covered but the man made covering was not sufficient then
and it will never be sufficient now and in the future.
There is nothing that we can do IN OUR OWN POWER to cover the sin that we commit in the eyes of God
V. 21
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
God needed to create a covering
This covering of animal skin served as a temporary atonement
It is from this pattern that we can understand the temporary atonement through the practice of animal sacrifice.
The penalty of sin is death.
Sin must be atoned for
Sin will not go unpunished.
God used the practice of animal sacrifice to point to the ultimate sacrifice of sin, that being Jesus
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For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
When Adam and Eve sinned it caused separation from God.
This original sin caused a ripple effect that we are still dealing with today
Humanity will need to contend with the consequences of sin until Jesus returns
But God did not leave us without hope
We can see all the way back at the beginning of the Bible that God had a plan to deal with sin
He gave us this pattern of substitutionary atonement
Jesus is our propitiation
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10. In faith, we can be covered in the mercy of Jesus.
Our faith in Jesus restores us to God permanently
On our own there is nothing that we can do to earn or work our way to restoration.
There is nothing that we can do to cover ourselves
Our salvation comes only by faith in Jesus
We are saved by Hos gracious gift of mercy
Turn to
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
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11. Salvation comes by grace through faith.
It is a gift of God
Salvation is a gift of grace lavished upon those who profess faith in Jesus as King!
If you have never made that confession of faith, don’t wait.
Benediction:
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.