Curse and Consequences

There once was an elderly man who was a very accomplished artist. He was particularly famous for his beautiful landscapes. His paintings hung in some of the most exclusive art galleries around the world. This man was elderly and he happened to be a grandfather. He had just one young granddaughter, and he doted on her. She was five years old—full of life—and he always looked forward to her visits to his home.

But she was a strong-willed child and she often said and did things which required that she be punished. For example, one day at the dinner table, she was playing with her food, even though she had been told repeatedly to stop. So finally, in frustration, her grandmother made the little girl go and sit in the corner. And, unfortunately, that’s where she often found herself—sitting in the corner as punishment for some offence.

Her grandfather was distressed about the situation. He knew that he and his wife had to be firm with the little girl, but at the same time, he felt so sorry for her having to sit in the corner. So here’s what he did.

One day, when his granddaughter was not there, he took his palette and his brush and he went and sat down on a little stool in the corner and painted on the wall of the room the most beautiful landscape. He painted it at her height, so she could see it. And he filled it with animals and fairies and humorous characters and hidden messages. It took him several days to complete. But when it was done, it was a masterpiece. And he did it so that his young granddaughter would have something to look at—something to occupy her mind, lift her spirit, and awaken her imagination—even while she was sitting in the corner being punished.

That’s a good illustration of how justice can be tempered by grace. In the same way, our heavenly Father—who loves us so much—doesn’t let us get away with sin. He is holy and righteous and must judge us for what we do. But even as He disciplines us, He extends an open hand of grace to us.

And this is what we find today as we go back to Genesis 3 and the Garden of Eden. We find God’s judgment tempered by God’s grace. First, there is judgment. v. 14ff…

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 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.”

To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of 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.”

Now this is a severe passage. It tells us about curses and pain, enmity and conflict—it doesn’t make for very happy reading! And that is because sin has entered the world and sin always results in suffering and sorrow.

God first pronounces a curse on the serpent, and this curse is twofold. First, there is a physical curse on the animal because the serpent was the animal that Satan used as his instrument. From that time on, snakes would crawl on their bellies.

Apparently, prior to this, the serpent had been an animal that had walked erect. Perhaps it even flew. And it must have been a very beautiful animal—the word serpent in Hebrew means “the shining one”. This is probably the reason Satan chose to indwell the serpent to tempt Eve.

But from that time on, the serpent was going to crawl on the ground, in the dust—a picture of humiliation. Have you ever wondered why, down through history, there has always been an almost universal fear and loathing of snakes. You say the words cobra, python, viper, and they bring fearsome images to our minds. This is why—because of God’s curse. There is fear and enmity there.

But beyond the physical curse on the snake as an animal, God pronounced a spiritual curse on Satan, who had indwelt the serpent.

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.

Theologians call this verse the “proto-evangelium”—the first good news. Because it tells of the coming conflict between the seed of the woman and the devil. Who is the seed of the woman? It is the Messiah, of course. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin—he was not born the usual way from the seed of a man. That is why he is called the seed of the woman.

And this verse tells us that the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, would crush the serpent’s head. That is a fatal injury. Christ would kill Satan. But it also tells us that in doing so, he himself would be injured. The serpent would strike his heel. That is not a fatal injury, but it is an injury. Jesus suffered and died on the cross. They struck him and flogged him and drove iron spikes through his body. They pierced his side with a spear. But none of those injuries proved ultimately fatal, because Jesus rose again.

So Genesis 3:15 is the first prophecy in the Bible that talks about the cross of Jesus Christ and the ultimate solution to the problem of evil. And it is a verse that was not even addressed to man—God said this to the devil.

God pronounced a curse on Satan, but he did not pronounce a curse on Adam and Eve. What he did was to allow the man and the woman to experience the consequences of their sin. And he often does this today. If you sin, God does not curse you. But he allows you to experience the consequences of your sin.

And the consequences of sin for Adam and Eve were different. For the woman, there would be painful travail in childbirth and in the raising of those children, for that is what the Hebrew expression indicates. It includes the entire process of having children, not just the giving of birth.

God originally had told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and he had given that command in the form of a blessing. Children were meant to be a blessing. But now, because of the presence of sin, children would also become a source of great pain—especially to the woman.

I think you mothers would agree that your children can be, at the same time, both the greatest blessing and the greatest heartache in your life.

And because of sin, there would be another source of great pain in a woman’s life. It would be in her relationship with her husband. Look at the last part of verse 16…

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

This verse is often misunderstood. The word “desire” is a very interesting word. In this context, it does not mean a positive desire, it means a negative desire. The same Hebrew word is used in Genesis 4:7, where the Lord says to Cain “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” The word means “to control, or to dominate—to gain the upper hand”.

So what is God saying here? He is saying that, because of sin, the relationship of companionship and harmony and teamwork that was supposed to exist between a man and a woman will turn into a contest of wills. It will be the battle of the sexes. The woman’s sinful self-will will make her to want to dominate her husband, to usurp the place of leadership in the marriage, to control him.

And the man, because he is also a sinner, fights back. And because of his superior strength, in most cases, he will end up ruling over the woman, domineering and dictating. And I would remind you that in most places in the world, that is exactly how it is. It’s a man’s world. Down through history, women have been downtrodden and mistreated. And it’s all a consequence of sin.

And for the woman, those consequences are felt most keenly in the relational area of life—that part of life that is nearest and dearest to her—her family, her children, her marriage.

But sin also has consequences in the man’s life. Look at verse 17…

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of 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.”

A woman tends to find her significance in relationships. But a man tends to find his significance in his work. And here, his whole work-life is affected by sin. God had created man to be the master over creation, but now, because of the Fall, creation isn’t going to co-operate anymore.

There is now a new principle at work in creation—a principle of decay and disorder and chaos—that makes all of man’s efforts to bring it into submission frustratingly futile. He sweats and he labors painfully hard—the word is the same word used for the woman’s labor in verse 16—but he barely makes a living from the soil.

And in the end, the very soil that he works so hard to get to produce anything is the soil he is destined to return to. Because now he is a dying creature. From the day he is born, he is destined to die. Recently I ran across a neat definition for health. You know what health is? Health is merely the slowest possible way of dying.

So ultimately, no matter how hard we work, when we finally step back and look at what we have accomplished, it is all futile, because we die and leave it all behind. The author of Ecclesiastes said…

I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. A man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, but then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it.

Sin has painful consequences for woman in her relational life; sin has painful consequences for man in his work life. And in the justice of God, he allows us to experience these consequences. But God always provides grace. And that is what he did with Adam and Eve. Look at verse 20…

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Now, at first glance, this verse doesn’t seem to belong here. What does this have to do with anything? But it is a very significant verse.

God has just gotten done pronouncing a curse on Satan and spelling out the consequences of sin for Adam and Eve. The atmosphere of this passage is grim and the shadow of death has fallen over the first human couple.

How does Adam respond? He responds by giving his wife a new name—Eve. Up until this time, she doesn’t really have a name—she is just called woman. But now Adam calls her Eve. You say, “So what?”

I’ll tell you what! This is a stupendous verse! What does Eve mean? Eve means “living; or life-giver”, and Moses tells us that Adam called her that name because she would become the mother of all the living. Why is that significant?

Because it indicates what was going on in Adam’s heart, that’s why! Question: had Eve become a mother yet? No. She wasn’t even pregnant. Adam and Eve didn’t even know what pregnancy was yet! So how could Adam suddenly decide to call her the mother of all the living?

Because he had heard what God had said back in verse 15 about the seed of the woman, and about her offspring. He understood that God was saying that the story wasn’t over. They weren’t just going to die. They were going to have children—descendants—and one of his wife’s descendants was going to be mighty special. And you know what? Adam believed God.

Even though there was no evidence. Even though all around him seemed to indicate that the story was going to have an unhappy ending—Adam chose to believe God. This verse is so significant because it is the first time in the Bible that a man expresses faith in God’s Word. In Genesis 3:20, Adam confesses faith.

And that unlocks the fountain of God’s grace. I’m not saying that it takes man to be faithful before God will be grace-full. But it is only when we express our faith in God that we can begin to experience all the grace He has for us.

Look at what God now begins to do for Adam and Eve.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

God covers their sin. Remember, Adam and Eve had come up with a kind of a “fig-leaf fashion statement” to try to cover up their sin and guilt. But that was inadequate. All of our efforts to make ourselves presentable to God are useless. Only God can cover our sin.

And here he does so, by means of an object lesson. He provides garments of skin for Adam and Eve. That means that a couple of innocent animals had to lose their lives in order for their sin to be covered.

Hebrews 9:22 says “Without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins.” The first blood that was shed on planet earth was shed because God himself slew two animals—and I’ll bet they were lambs—to make a covering for man’s sin.

That points us to the Lamb of God who shed his blood to take away our sin. Now look at verse 22…

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

What you have happening here is Adam and Eve getting banished from the Garden. They were now sinners, and subject to death. They could not be allowed free access to the Tree of Life in that condition. God said “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Now exactly what that Tree was and what the nature of its fruit was, is a subject I don’t want to speculate on here.

But I would draw your attention to the fact that, from this point on, the Tree of Life disappears from the Biblical record until it reappears in the very last chapter of the Bible, Rev. 22, where we see it in the New Jerusalem giving healing to the nations.

Gen. 3:24 says that God “placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”

I believe that this verse has been very much misunderstood. We get the idea that the cherubim were there to keep Adam and Eve from getting at the Tree of LIfe. But look at what it says: “they were there to guard the way to the Tree of Life”. (KJV says “to keep the way of the tree of life”—to keep it open, in other words.)

What do you know about cherubim? Well, if you’ve read your Bible, you know that cherubim are angelic beings with a very special function. They are not just ordinary angels. In the Bible, the cherubim are always associated with God’s throne, God’s glory, and God’s mercy. The Lord is commonly described in the OT as “the One who sits enthroned between the cherubim.”

Ezekiel tells us that Lucifer, the angel who fell and became the devil, was once a guardian cherub himself, standing by the throne of God. His sin was that he wanted to make his own throne higher than God’s throne.

Now my question about Gen. 3:24 is this: Why would God put the cherubim at the gates of the Garden, along the way to the Tree of LIfe? If all He was interested in doing was in making sure that Adam didn’t sneak back in, any old angel would have done the job. No way could Adam get around an angel.

Why the cherubim? Because I believe that God placed them there to make sure that the way back to the Tree of Life stayed open, but stayed open on God’s terms.

God was conserving and preserving the way to the Tree of LIfe. He was guaranteeing with nothing less than his throne and his glory that there would always be a way back to the Tree of Life. Satan has succeeded in getting us thrown out of the Garden, but he will never succeed in shutting down our access to the gift of eternal life, but we must come God’s way. And God’s way is through Jesus Christ.

Isn’t it interesting that when God gave Moses the directions for the building of the ark of the covenant that he had him carve the image of two cherubim above the the Mercy Seat—the place where the high priest would make atonement for the sins of the people?

And isn’t it interesting that images of the cherubim were sown into the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies in the Temple—the same curtain that was rent in two, from the top to the bottom, when Jesus died on the cross?

God was reminding us that the cherubim have always safeguarded our access into His presence. Satan, the fallen cherub, can do nothing to bar the way; to keep us from God’s grace. And that grace is evident in Genesis 3, where

• Adam confessed his faith

• God covered his sin

• God conserved the way

Are you aware of God’s grace at work in your life this morning? Are you willing, like Adam was in the midst of failure and defeat, to put your faith and hope in God? God’s grace can make something very beautiful out of your broken life.