What happened to the creation of God part 3
Genesis 2: 8 And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15 Then Yahweh God took the man and [n]set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
We are concluding a three-part sermon today around the title; What happened to the creation of God. The question comes from our study of Genesis 1 and 2 where we learn that God made everything good in the beginning. All the world was a lush garden. And Adam and Eve were given an even more beautiful and abundant garden to live in. There was no death. Neither man nor beast killed to eat. The animals did not hunt and kill each other. There were no extremes of temperature or weather. No thorns, no thistles. Everything was beautiful. So, our question was; what happened to mess it up. And we walked through the story of the Garden, the Law of God; don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We were introduced to Satan, the tempter, in the disguise of a serpent enticing Eve to doubt and defy God, which she did, and so did Adam. Thus came the fall.
Today, we come to the complete answer to the question concerning what happened to God’s creation. And the answer is; The curse. All of creation is under the curse. We use the word curse here because of what God said after He found Adam and Eve in their sin.
Genesis 3:14 And Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than any of the 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;
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 pain you will eat of it All the days of your life.
Because of their disobedience, God placed a curse on His creation. What is that curse? We will get into the details in a moment, but you can really sum up the curse with one word; death. We will describe what that means in a moment, but the curse really simply meant death.
16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Before Adam and Eve chose sin, everything was life. It was alive, and good, and very good, and vital, and animated, and growing. After their sin, it was dead or dying.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses,
17 For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one,
21 so that, as sin reigned in death,
Just for the fun of it I tried to think of all the things that die.
Do you want to know what the curse is? Everything dies. Flowers die, people all die, animals die, pets die, churches die, movements die, momentum dies, love dies, hope dies, relationships die, crops die, brain function dies, creativity dies, compassion dies, countries die, organs and cells die, desire dies, business’s die, the soul dies, the young die, the old die, the good die, and the music died.
Everything dies. And that’s the curse. If you want to know what happened to creation, it is dying and dead. But we need to read what happened in order to fully understand that.
I want to walk you through everything that died after Adam and Eve sinned. Here is the short list; the death of innocence, the death of love, the death of productivity, the death of the body, the death of our spirit. But lest you get to discouraged. Even in the pronouncement of the curse of death, God promised a blessing. And that is what we will close with.
Prayer
To start we need to tell you about the curse on the serpent. It doesn’t necessarily directly affect us, but it is background material for the rest of what we are learning.
I. The curse on the serpent.
13 Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 And Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than any of the 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;
Now, quickly we need to address a question. Why did God curse the serpent? We made the point last time that snakes don’t talk, and that the serpent was being indwelt and used by Satan. So, why punish the serpent? The serpent is just an irrational animal? Well, let’s not start feeling sorry for the snake. Yes, it is an unthinking beast. So, I think it’s best to think of the animal as only that.
It is really Satan to whom God is directing His curse. And He uses the serpent animal as a perpetual illustration of how God punished that Old Serpent, the devil. What had God already done to Satan? He has cast him out of heaven, down to the earth. Another meaning for the word earth is “dirt.” God cast Satan down into the dirt. And by doing so he relegated him to a status below humankind. Mankind was made in God’s image and was given dominion over all God’s creatures, including the serpent. Satan was cast down to the earth, to a position below mankind.
So, God takes the creature that Satan chose to indwell for his nefarious purposes, and makes that creature move about the earth in a position lower that all the other land animals. He slithers about in the dust, every time he opens his mouth he takes in the dust that falls from the shoes of men.
It’s an appropriate and perpetual illustration of what God did to Satan. You might say, “poor snake, he didn’t do anything to deserve that.” I really don’t think the snake is aware. So now comes the curse of death against mankind.
II. The death of innocence.
Genesis 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
6 Then 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, so she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves [c]loin coverings.
9 Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
All of this together tells us that something dramatic happened in the consciousness of Adam and Eve after they ate of the tree. Before they ate of the tree, they were still unclothed, but they were unaware and innocent. They were no more aware of their nakedness than any animal is.
But after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something changed in their brains. They knew they were naked. And because they knew, they attempted to cover themselves by sewing or weaving fig leaves together to cover themselves. Which explains why in some Jewish tradition, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a fig, not an apple. They eat of the fruit, discover they are naked, then take leaves from the same tree to make coverings.
Now God had said, “On the day you eat of this tree, you will die.” But they didn’t drop dead physically. In fact, they live on for years after this. So, what died. A number of things died. On that day their innocence died. Their sense of purity before God died. Their confidence before God and before each other died. There’s another passage of Scripture that captures what this must of felt like.
Lamentations 1:8 Jerusalem sinned greatly; Therefore she has become an impure thing. All who honored her despise her Because they have seen her nakedness; Even she herself sighs and turns away.
What else dyed?
III. The death of love.
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?” 12 And the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave to me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Notice first that before they ate of the fruit, Adam said of his wife, “She is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” Before they ate of the fruit, Adam was instructed to leave and cleave to his wife. These words are still used in wedding ceremonies today, because they describe the kind of oneness in a marriage that we crave. We want a relationship that is a one flesh, a cleaving to each other relationship.
But notice how quickly Adam goes from, “she is flesh of my flesh,” to “it’s her fault, she gave me the fruit, it’s your fault God because you set us up to begin with.” Before the fruit it was sacrificial love and companionship. After ward it was every man and woman for him/herself.
And I want you to notice something else. The curse of the woman.
16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain and [f]conception, In pain you will [g]bear children;
The curse of the woman here will taint her love for her future children.
God changed the way in which women gave birth in such a way that it became painful. Apparently bearing children before the fall would have been simple and easy for the woman. I’ve heard some women comment on how effortlessly some animals in the wild bear children. It all happens so quickly. But, by contrast, the pain, and marathon of human childbirth can last for hours, even days. And “childbirth” includes a lot more than simple pain at the moment of childbirth. “In pain you will bear children.” That means that the entire process and mechanism that allows women to bear children will be painful. That includes all the cramps, and inconveniences, the body changes, the difficulties of childbirth, the heightened risk of death in childbirth, the postpartum depression, and even the difficulties of transitioning in and out of the childbirth years. “In pain you will bear children.”
This difficulty is so great that it has caused a dissension in the relationship between mother and child. Some women resent the fact that they are the bearers of children. They resent the children who tie them to the home. They resent the children who marred their bodies. It is the death of love for some.
And there was a second curse proclaimed over the woman.
16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain and [f]conception, In pain you will [g]bear children; Your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”
There’s also a curse on the relationship between a man and woman.
When Adam and Eve were created, Eve was Adam’s helper. She was to come alongside of him in the work God set them to. It was a relationship of love and cooperation. But, when Adam and Eve chose Satan, the knowledge of good and evil, they started down this pathway of blame and accusation. And the curse on their relationship reflects what had already begun in their marriage.
Your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”
The phrase in Hebrew has no verb. It literally says, “toward your husband you desire, and he will rule over you.” Most take this to indicate that the desire here is not the desire of the woman to please her husband, or to have a deep relationship of love with him. Rather, the desire is to rule him. The curse is that instead of companionship and love, she will desire to rule the man, and that instead he will rule over her. What it describes is a constant battle for dominance. This is what used to be called the battle of the sexes. It is death. The death of love in the home.
What other kind of death did the curse bring after they ate of the tree?
IV. The death of productivity.
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 [h]pain you will eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the [i]plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your [j]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.”
This curse is a reversal of the blessing in chapter 2.
“9 And out of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food” Before the curse, plants just grew. There was no painful exertion required to make it grow. Mankind just had to manage the abundance. And now, in order to get the earth to produce crops, Adam would endure pain.
“In [h]pain you will eat of it All the days of your life.” Adam, you are going to get blisters. Your back is going to throb from digging and planting. Your eyes are going to burn from the sun and dust. When you hope for rain, there will be drought, when you want sunshine there will be torrential rain.
“18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you” There had been not thorns and thistles that choked away the crop before the fall. But now the only thing you will have a bumper crop of will be weeds. Every day you will be pulling weeds and pulling weeds.
“19 By the sweat of your [j]face You will eat bread,” You are going to have to work to exhaustion simply to have bread to eat.
There is another message that God gave to a disobedient people during the time of the prophet Hosea. It has a similar tone to this one. Haggai 1:5-7 So now, thus says Yahweh of hosts, “Set your heart to consider your ways! 6 You have sown much, but bring in little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is [a]not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”
Now, how, might you ask, does this passage relate to us. I don’t do any farming, and I don’t labor in such a way that I do a lot of sweating.
This curse does directly apply to farming the earth. This is a curse of the physical earth. The primary employment for most of earth’s history has been farming. The production of food. In the garden it was unencumbered. The soil was perfect for growing. The watering system was set up to be self-sustaining. There were no thorns, thistles, or weeds that encumbered growth. Now, God says that Adam will have to toil greatly to make the ground produce.
But I believe there is also something here about the fulfillment that a person can experience from labor. Before the fall, labor was meaningful, God-ordained and fruitful. Afterward it is often meaningless, pointless, tedious, and unfruitful. And a good part of that is because the presence of God is gone. One of the most meaning full parts of Adam and Eve’s employment had to be the presence of an awesome boss. He infused the labor with purpose, joy, and abundance. Now that is gone.
What is came because of the curse of death?
V. The death of the physical body.
15 Then Yahweh God took the man and [n]set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Now, I don’t have to point out that Adam and Eve did not drop dead on the day that they ate of the tree. In fact, Scripture tells us that they went on to have three named children; Cain, Abel, and Seth, and other sons and daughters. Although we are not told how old Eve was when she died, there is nothing to indicate that she died young. And Adam’s age at death is recorded. Genesis 5:5 tells us that he was 930 years old when he died. Being created physically and mentally perfect and living in a world that had not been wholly corrupted by sin, disease and death worked out in many years for Adam.
So, he did not die “on the day” that he ate from the tree. What do we do with that? Some look at it as an error or contradiction in Scripture. Others say, “well God must have changed His mind.” I don’t believe either of those explanations are faithful to Scripture. Still others point out that the phrase, “in the day that you eat of it you will die” is sometimes used to simply mean, “Most certainly you will die.” I don’t have any issue with that understanding. Because I think that death did come to Adam and Eve on the day that they ate from that tree. It came in all the ways I have described so far. But I think that his physical body also began to die on that day. You see, before the fall, Adam and Eve were given the privilege of walking in the very presence of God. And God’s presence does something to a person.
Let me show you a passage out of the book of Exodus.Exodus 33:13-15 So now, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. See also, that this nation is Your people.” 14 And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.
God’s presence went with the children of Israel in the wilderness. And it tells us that some remarkable things happened because God was with them. They were feed daily, and given water. But it also says that their shoes didn’t wear out for the entire forty years they were in the wilderness. Why? Because God preserved them. And God was doing that in that world before the fall. He still preserves the earth to a degree.
Hebrews 1:3 3 who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and [d]upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
But in a very special way, mankind, and the earth, in the Garden of Eden enjoyed the immediate presence of God and His life-giving power.
But, when man and woman chose sin and Satan, part of the curse was their being banished from the Garden, and more importantly from God’s presence. And out of God’s presence, they begin to die. Their bodies are about as perfect as they can be, but they are still subject to death.
What else did the curse of death bring?
VI. The death of the spirit.
22 Then Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us [l]to know good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— 23 therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to [m]cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 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 [n]guard the way to the tree of life.
The worst death, and the immediate death was the death of man’s spirit. His spiritual nature. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they experienced a separation from God, a loss of relationship due to their sin.
Romans 5:12 12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.
The Bible teaches that from the time of Adams sin throughout all history, we have all been born being “dead in our trespasses and sins.” Ephesians 2:1
Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Romans 4:17 as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you”—in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.
We are spiritually blind men walking the earth.
2 Corinthians 4:4 in whose case the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
We were separated from God’s presence by sin. Adam and Eve, from then on were incapable of having spiritual communion with God, because their spirits were dead. They died on the day they ate of that tree. And we inherited that genetic spiritual deadness from them.
That’s a lot of death and curses. Not a very uplifting sermon is it? But that is not all of the story. This is so remarkable. God is already at work with a plan of salvation even in the immediate moments after Adam and Eve sin. He delivers some words that are called the “protoevangelium.” The first gospel. Listen to it.
Genesis 3:15 says, “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.”
Let’s sum this up. God has cursed the serpent. And then He tells the serpent about His future relationship with the woman. He tells about the future relationship between the serpent’s child, and the Child of the woman. We have to remember a couple things here. First, this is somewhat poetic and figurative language. The offspring of the serpent here represents Satan. And the offspring of the woman represents Jesus Christ. God is saying here, that despite the fact that sin and death have come into the world and marred His creation, and destroyed the spiritual relationship between Himself and mankind, there will come a day when a man will be born in the human race who will crush the serpent’s head. He will deal a mortal blow to Satan. Satan, in turn will bruise that man’s heal. He will wound Him, but it will not result in His remaining dead.
This is the promise that one day the curse will be lifted. It is a promise that death will lose its sting. The death of innocence, love, productivity, the body, and the spirit will be overturned. And the earth will return to Eden again.