Well, friends, thanks for being with us as we kick off Genesis chapter three,
verse 14 today.
Yeah, back in to the story here,
just in a refresher for a Monday,
the man and the woman
have eaten the fruit.
God has confronted them and the woman has blamed the serpent.
The man has blamed the woman and today we get into kind of the aftermath and this is really the first
speech that God makes.
We’ve heard God say things,
even sentences, but
in your Bible, you probably will see this
written up almost like lyrics and so this is kind of an extended speech and there’s
a lot going on here just as we get into this,
we’ll probably spend a couple of days here,
but as we move into this,
there are some streams that are coming together.
There’s the punishment,
there’s some explanation,
there’s some prediction,
there’s kind of
a melding of different themes here that we’ll look at and we’ll do our best to point out.
So,
the woman said the serpent tricked me and then the Lord God said to the serpent,
so we worked our way down to the serpent and that’s actually where God starts then in handing out the repercussions.
The Lord God said to the serpent,
because you’ve done this,
cursed are you among all
animals and among the wild creatures,
upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall
eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
He will strike your head
and you will strike his heel.
So there is a kind of cultural history to people not being real excited about snakes
and part of the explanation of that here is that unlike the other animals who are going
to move about on legs that the snake is going to crawl in the dust and that this will now
be punishment for deceiving or misleading the man and woman and not only that but there
will be this sort of dislike that humans will have
toward the snakes and we often read particularly
Isaiah has helped us read this book kind of through a Christian lens,
you’ve heard some of this in music and sermons and various things but here we have this idea that people are
going to stomp on snakes,
they’re going to kill them,
they’re going to hate them and
that there will from this moment be forever a kind of animosity between the humans and the serpent.
So in all of the things to follow if you look closely there’s going to be a change in function
that happens for each one of these people and then there’s also going to have an impact in their relationships.
So here the thing,
the consequence for this serpent is ultimately now it’s going to be
on its belly, it’s going to be dirty,
it’s going to be the dust,
it’s going to be rubbing
against the ground right and because of that now it as we see and dust you shall eat well
what did this snake subtly,
craftily convince Eve to eat,
well convinced her to eat something
well now we see that the snake is going to be forced to eat the very dust,
the very dirt of the ground right so you see the punishment in form there and then you do have this change
in relationship, this statement that now there’s going to be a hostile relationship between
you and the woman,
between you and her offspring and so we’ve set up that this sin,
the opening of eyes, the becoming like God has now set up this further revelation that the creature
has been demoted even further right,
this crafty creature is now banned,
is now set out and then now you have this break in relationship between the creature and the woman,
between the created animal and between the one made in the image of God and this we see mirrored
of course beyond this story Clint where we see this breakdown in the sin of the man and
the woman has implications on the larger creation,
we see that already happening that the snake
though the snake didn’t do the sinful act that the snake has already been wrapped up
in the repercussions and consequences of that act.
Right and there’s a couple of things
going on here from just a textual,
it is to be read that this crawling is a new reality
for the serpent, that is a punishment in other words
some people have tried to figure out
is this story telling us that the snake originally had legs,
was it some other kind of creature
or did it simply crawling grass which was you know beautiful in the garden but now it’s
leaving the garden and being in the dust,
you know those are
perhaps interesting questions but not particularly helpful,
others have pointed out
that this is one of those places
you shouldn’t read literally,
we know that snakes don’t eat dirt but what have we seen
in the story right,
God created man out of the dust and now the snake is going to wallow
face first
in that very dust but not in a creative way,
in a way that is separate,
in a way that is even looked down literally looked down upon and in a way that brings a kind of
dislike, almost hatred between the people and the serpent
and
this is the punishment the snake now,
this crafty one who went after the humans now gets to wallow around in the dirt
for the rest of its existence as a
punishment and as a memory of what it did
and so then we move to the woman verse 16 here,
to the woman he said I will greatly increase your payings in childbearing,
in pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall
be for your husband and he shall rule over you,
not a very big verse but a lot going
on here, so at an explanation level this again explains to people through their stories
why does childbirth have so much
difficulty,
why is it painful,
here we have the origin
of that, the explanation that childbearing has now even offspring have been affected
by this disobedience and it has brought to the woman not only in general some sense of
discomfort but literally physical pain and yet she will want to have children,
the desire will be for her husband and he shall rule over you and historically we’ve had to be
very careful with this verse because
sometimes when we’ve misread that we’ve liked the idea
particularly husbands have liked the idea of ruling over a wife but notice that this is a repercussion,
that this is not an intention,
this is a result of sinfulness,
this is a result of disobedience and the idea that there is or should be a hierarchy has been debated
and battered about in churches a lot but here we should not read this as necessarily a prescription
of how things should be but in brokenness how they may be or how they will be and I just think we
have to be very careful there,
so the woman experiences this same two-fold result,
a difficulty has now come upon her and a relational struggle as well.
Yeah so Clint note that and correct me
if I’m wrong here but this is the first time we’ve had in this story this very clear ordering of
relational priority of ordering within the human order,
you had of course the woman was made from
the man right that they’re connected at this very biological level but even in this relationship
with God the idea that God walked in the garden that they lived in innocence and vulnerability
there was this sense that we get that it was a flat relationship structure there was no need
to rule one over another they lived in perfect harmony and peace we have this sense that the
garden was a safe and beautiful verdant place the kind of place that you don’t need to be
ruled or to rule over and now suddenly we see that with this grasping with this desire to be
like God this sort of self-elevation we now have a created order where one relationship is now
beset against another where human is set in desire we have that language you’ll desire your husband
and then you have the idea that you will be ruled over and Clint makes a strong point I want to
re-emphasize that point that you make here that this is embedded in the consequences of sin this
isn’t a paragon an image of the way that God intends it this is the way that things go when
things aren’t going well so so this isn’t for us a thing that we should say well this is God’s
divine intended order no that came a chapter and a half ago we’re past that now now this is the
result of human sinfulness this is ultimately the beginning of the setup these are the reasons why
we need a savior and sometimes texts like this have been read unfortunately outside that context
and people have held it up as look this is the way that God intended no this is the consequence
for what God didn’t want for us to have happened right and then we see a similar pattern here with
the man it’s a little bit of an expanded telling but verse 17 to the man the Lord said because you
have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree about which I commanded you you shall
not eat cursed is the ground because of you in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life
thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the
sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you are taken
your dust into the dust you return so here we have this kind of the at the again at the explanatory
level why is it so hard to raise food well that’s a punishment it is a reminder a daily a seasonally
reminder a seasonal reminder of the failing because the man disobeyed rather than the situation that
God created in which the man and woman had almost endless variety of trees to eat from they
now have to work for their food the food is not just simply a gift that they only need collect now it must be
cultivated it they must battle thorns and thistles and they will eat the plants of the field by the
sweat of their face and until the ground until until they return to the ground out of which they
were taken dust to dust and so again we see dust in the first part of this we see dust in the last
part of this and we see a punishment in which there is now labor the task of life which had
previously been a beautiful gift is now a difficult battle and again not the intention
but the result of disobedience and know this there’s so many themes that get interwoven in this in a
masterful way we’ve already talked about how God created
everything with God’s voice and
here once again we have this theme where God speaks and you know God says that you listened
to the voice of your wife the idea of you listened to the wrong thing you you heard the wrong voice
and we know it says that Adam was there with her right so it’s not as if there was some big speech
or something but the idea that you were willing to give your attention and you were willing to
follow not the ultimate one but but this one who led you astray then now we come to the end here
and i want to throw this up so you can see this note until you return to the ground from out of
it you were taken you are dust into dust you will return you
you have the snake who is
relegated to the dust right you have this reality where the consequence of sin is actually seen in that
encounter with the dirt and the muck of creation but what’s fascinating when you really consider
this is that ultimately remember this the man was made of dust God took this thing and made good out
of it in fact it says you made in the image of God is this affirmation that we receive now that very
instrument of creation becomes a symbol of destruction it becomes a symbol of the breakdown
of what God did what God did and made and proclaimed good now we see on the other side
of this human grasping for divinity for power beyond the the grasp that one should have
that in that action the thing that was made good has now become an instrument of destruction it’s become a symbol
of brokenness and so this very thing that Adam was made out of will ultimately
be the thing that he now returns to and this is the
classic sort of biblical understanding
of the nature of our sin right the idea that God isn’t imposing some sort of dictatorial
punishment this is the fruit that comes of disobedience and and it is the way of a disordered universe
right and we would be I think we would be short-sighted to think that if we read these oh six seven
verses we understood the punishment of sin the truth is that will continue to play itself out
throughout all the rest of the pages of scripture the human experience is now tainted it’s fallen
and that has an impact it has an impact on how we relate with the creation it has an impact on how
literally bringing forward new life of being fruitful and multiply that charge that God gave
them is now made painful and difficult and it has an impact it has implication on that very life
itself the struggle that it is going to find rather than the the protected and safe confines
of where God had placed them we now see
this place of struggle this place of pain this place
of sweat and toil and it is in just those few verses it is a different world and we’ll see
the culmination of that tomorrow as we move forward in the story but things have changed
at a fundamental level not only for the man and woman
but in all of creation and and that is the
story that we call the fall this is the forfeiting of what God offered and instead the man and woman
have gone their own way they’ve disobeyed and there is a significant impact on the rest of the
creation and the rest of human history because of it yeah i i tend to think clint that maybe when
we imagine this story as children we grasp this image of the fruit we somewhat
probably don’t understand why that has such gravity but then we get to this part of the story and it just descends
so quickly it it moves from that inciting action of not trusting God and then it rolls directly
into God showing how this has now changed everything you go from that lack of transparency
and vulnerability uh the shame that Adam and Eve both experience and then that rolls directly
now into a radically transformed life the way that you lived before that choice and the way
that you live after that choice is substantially and fundamentally different and and this becomes
for us not just a explanation of the problem but it actually becomes the foundation for us to
understand what the the radical solution would have to be in other words it’s not just what Adam
and Eve have created it’s not just the problem that they’ve now made but this is the far-reaching
extent it’s the way that they live it’s the relationship that they have with one another
these have been changed at their core level so therefore God’s response to this will have to
happen at that same level it will have to be transformative to the very heart and and it just
sort of surface platitudes won’t be enough and I think that’s what makes this kind of text so
powerful as it reveals the extent to which this virus has already traveled yeah well said Michael
so that’s that’s essentially the story to this point and here is the aftermath we continue to
see that tomorrow we look at the end of this chapter which is in some ways a continuation
of the story and and in many ways a transition into the rest of the story and so we will hope
to be with you tomorrow and we appreciate your time today yeah thanks for finding us despite all
the facebook troubles and we will see you tomorrow