World Reframed: Enter the Curse (Genesis 3:14-24)

Intro

I wrote and preached this sermon in early March of 2020. COVID-19 was in the news, it was beginning to dominate the headlines, but we had no idea what it would become. As you’ll read near the bottom, I did incorporate the growing threat of the virus in my account of the brokenness of the world. After all, you couldn’t buy toilet paper or sanitizer anywhere! Now, as I post this, we are one and a half years into this pandemic. My province is currently experiencing a Delta variant-driven “fourth wave”. About 4.5 million people in the world have died from this virus. Measures taken to contain it have given rise to an untold number of shattered marriages, debilitating addictions, mental health crises, and more. When I first preached this sermon, my intro questioned whether we really believed our country was “broken”, given how comparatively good we had it. One and a half years later, I don’t know if there’s a person alive who isn’t aware of the brokenness of the world. Where does all this brokenness come from? Let’s look at Genesis 3, which tells us about “the curse”.

I won’t promise to answer all the questions we have about the existence of suffering and brokenness and evil in the world. But as we’ve been doing throughout this series, I will try to provide a biblical framework from Genesis about this aspect of life that is all around us. But first, some context, a recap of where we’ve been. In Genesis, God creates the world. He makes it a good, ordered place and He blesses it. He makes it a place where life can flourish, a place that reflects His character and glory. He puts humans there, makes them in His image, meaning they have a status. He gives them a calling to care for the world and to do work in it that reflects His character. They’re His representatives, called to bring order out of disorder and extend Eden. And as part of this, they are given a choice. They have freedom to serve God or themselves, because they’re free agents- not in the sports sense, but in the moral decision making sense. And that choice is represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We said last week that the fruit of this tree represents the desire to make moral decisions apart from God. To decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, rather than submitting to God’s wisdom and direction. A serpent comes along, tempts Adam and Eve by convincing them to doubt God’s goodness. They eat of the fruit- they seek after this autonomy from God, which is the original sin, the sin that pervades our culture to this day. And then the immediate aftermath: they hide from God and try to cover up their sin, and when it’s found out, they pass the blame. “It’s not my fault, it’s this dang beautiful persuasive woman you put here!” says Adam. And this whole sorry series of events represents a deadly detour, a departure from God’s path of life that can only lead to death.

This morning, we’re looking at some of the long-term consequences of that sin in a passage known as “the curse”. And I’m going to make the case that while the consequences are severe, we often miss the point, we lose sight of the greatest tragedy that comes about as a result of sin. Let’s go piece by piece, starting with God’s address to the three parties involved.

1. Sin’s curse: brokenness

The serpent

First, we have God’s word to the serpent. One question is whether this is just about snakes, or something more. I said last week that the implication in the Bible, and certainly confirmed by the New Testament, is that the serpent is an embodiment, or at least an instrument of supernatural, personal evil. In other words, the one that we call Satan is behind the serpent’s words. The curse here is not God’s word to one particular animal, but instead His word to the presence of personal evil in the world.

And what does He say to this evil? That it will crawl on its belly and eat dust. This is not a statement about the serpent’s literal diet. The ancients knew as well as we do that snakes don’t rely on a diet of dirt. Dust here and other places is representative of humiliation, of defeat, of weakness and death. So what’s the point? The point is that while the serpent has won this battle, (ie.the serpent succeeded in leading Adam and Eve astray), the serpent is nevertheless doomed to ultimate defeat. He will not win. From a biblical perspective, Satan, who had this status as one of God’s servants, is fallen. His grasping after independence from God has only resulted in his humiliation and defeat.

That’s what’s behind the second phrase: enmity between the serpent and the woman. Again, this isn’t about some epic battle between snakes and people. Like, Planet of the Apes got it wrong, it’s actually snakes that are going to become our super-intelligent overlords. Which is a way creepier concept, isn’t it? Snakes instead of chimps? No, it’s about the ongoing battle between humans and evil, a battle which has only just begun in the garden. The word for the serpent’s striking and the human’s crushing are the same word. It’s that they’re going blow for blow, strike and counterstrike. Think about the civil rights movement in the States a couple of generations ago. That was humans like Martin Luther King Jr. striking at the serpent, pushing back against the violence and hatred that were a product of segregation. But the serpent strikes back, incites an assassination, continues to engender racism in the human heart, even if it’s more subtle. The battle goes on and on.

But what is the result of this conflict? God’s already said it, the serpent is doomed to defeat! And many people have seen in this passage the “first Gospel”, the first good news. That is, as soon as sin gets in the picture, God says He is going to defeat it. This is the third chapter of the Bible. Turn to the third last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 20. We read about Satan, who is called the ancient serpent, being cast into the lake of burning sulphur, threat eliminated. This defeat has already been guaranteed by the victory Jesus won at the cross and resurrection. Satan struck against the seed of humanity, the only sinless man, by inciting crucifixion. But through his faithfulness to death and then through his resurrection, Jesus struck back, crushing the serpent. Wherever we experience evil in the world, we can have this confidence: no matter what it looks like, no matter what it seems, evil will be defeated. The serpent is cursed. God will have the last word and has already struck the decisive blow to Satan’s head. Is that good news or what?

The woman

That’s good news for humans, that the serpent is cursed. But there’s bad news, too, of course. Let’s start with the woman.

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.”

Genesis 3:16

A couple of comments here. First, the childbearing thing. The first Hebrew term used here, for childbearing, actually has to do more with conception. The second term is about giving birth. So it’s not just the birthing, it’s the whole process from conception to birth that is affected. And the word that’s used for pain is not just physical pain but also emotional or psychological pain. In other words, anxiety, stress, trauma, that kind of thing. If you’ve had children, you might have experienced this. The whole process is fraught with anxiety and potential loss. Babies are fragile, life in the womb is fragile. I’ve shared about this before, but when Carolyn was 20 weeks pregnant with Zachary, an ultrasound found that he had a significant heart defect, and the doctors weren’t sure what that would mean for him. They didn’t know what his quality of life would be, what complications would arise, what exactly would happen after he was born. In a world where death reigns, that kind of thing happens. I would be lying if I said it didn’t cause anxiety and stress for us. In so many ways, the process of childbearing is painful.

Then there’s the second part, about the husband and wife. Formerly, I thought the idea here was the woman pines, “oh, I just love you so much, hubby of mine, I just want to spend all my time with you because you’re just the best”, while the husband goes, “no, woman, I want to go drink beers with my homies!” You know, the woman desires relationship whereas the husband rules with an iron fist and just isn’t that into the relationship. But that’s not how these words are used. Look at the same words in Genesis 4, which is the Cain and Abel story. Cain is filled with anger and envy towards his brother Abel, and God says to him in verse 7, “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Desire and rule. What does sin desire? To master Cain. To possess him, own him, direct him, have its way with him. And what does Cain need to do? Rule over it. Exert authority over it. 

See, that’s what the husband and wife element of the curse is about. It’s that both of them are now seeking to control the other, dominate the other, direct the other in ways that benefit themselves. In a world where sin has turned us in on ourselves, truly loving another person becomes much more difficult. It’s easier to use the other person to get something that we want. This is the second Crown reference in three weeks- I don’t want you to think that I’m some Crown fanatic, but here goes. Princess Margaret and Tony Snowden have a relationship that, at least as its portrayed in the show, is like a caricature of this exact thing. They’re constantly at each other’s throats, trying to control the other. Relationships experience brokenness because of sin.

The man

Then, finally, there’s the man.

¹⁷ 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.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ 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.”

Genesis 3:17-19

The point here is that the work Adam is involved in just got much harder. In ancient society especially, the woman’s primary realm was in the home, whereas the husband’s realm was in hunting or farming. It was working with the created stuff of the world. God is saying that this relationship between man and creation is now fractured. The land doesn’t have God’s blessing on it anymore. It’s not going to produce food like it did before.

This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t work before, or even that thorns and thistles didn’t exist pre-fall. But the hardness of the work has significantly increased. I think about it a bit like airport security. I assume that 30 or 40 years ago, there was airport security. But my understanding is that it was nothing like it is today, that it was a lot easier and painless to board a flight. But then an event happened that changed everything: 9/11. Nowadays, boarding a plan is a much more extensive process, a much more involved process. You need to measure all your liquids, do the whole body scan thing, have someone wipe that toothbrush device all over your bag for some unexplained reason, and so on. Sin has dramatically increased the complexity and difficulty in something that was previously much easier. That’s Adam’s work after sin. Sin twists and corrupts creation. Our decisions affect creation. We see that all around, and it’s thoroughly biblical. Our decisions have a direct impact on creation itself. If we live in ways that are greedy, that are lustful, that are gluttonous, creation pays the price.

The common thread in all of this is that the long-term consequences of sin are a fracturing of relationships. Relationships with animals, with people, with ourselves, with creation. It’s all impacted. These relationships, prior to sin, were whole. They were good. They reflected God’s glory. But sin twists and corrupts them, fractures and breaks them.  

And by the way, what God says here isn’t like a decree that we are required to make sure is always true. As in, if you have a generally peaceful and loving relationship with your spouse, you really should introduce some more stupid arguments about nothing and be super dogmatic about them, just to make sure that this whole control thing happens in your marriage. Or if you’re into gardening, and it just seems like things are too enjoyable and too much fun, maybe sow a bunch of weeds. Maybe try to plant a garden in the middle of a parking lot somewhere. Make sure that the curse is firmly established. No. Of course, we are called to live in ways that bring healing to our relationships. By the power of the Holy Spirit given through the grace of Jesus, we are to pursue Eden! But God is serious when He says this is the consequence of sin. This is what characterizes the world now. Brokenness in relationships.

2. Sin’s curse: separation from God

Having said all that, there is a relationship that is even more fundamental, even more basic, and the fracturing of this relationship is the reason for everything we’ve just talked about and more.

²⁰ Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living ²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 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.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ 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.

Genesis 3:20-24

Here’s the essence of this passage, and really the climax of the consequences of sin: exile from the Garden of Eden. But the Garden of Eden itself is not the biggest loss. That’s why you don’t read anywhere in the Old Testament about a group of people setting out on an expedition, Indiana Jones style, to find the Garden of Eden. You don’t read about people exploring the mountains of eastern Turkey, looking for this Garden, armed to the hilt to overcome the cherubim, trying to break in and get some of that tree of life. That’s not the longing. That’s not the loss. What is? It’s what the Garden of Eden represents.

The Garden of Eden, as we’ve talked about, represents the inner sanctuary of God’s temple. And His temple is His creation. It’s the world where things are as they should be because of His presence and His perfect rule. It is the presence of God and communion with Him that the saints of the Old Testament long for! And it’s this presence that gets lost in Genesis 3.

That’s why, in Exodus, you read Moses pleading with God: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Ex. 33:15-16). It’s why we read King David in the Psalms saying things like, “as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after you.” Or in another place, “I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water” (63:1). It’s why we read Isaiah’s desperate plea, “oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” (Isa. 64:1) It’s why we read Malachi foreseeing a day when “suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come” (Mal. 3:1). The longing of God’s people throughout the ages is for His presence, for His rule, for communion with Him.

This is the world that we were made for: a world where God’s presence is near and intimate and we walk with Him in perfect communion. When we talk about injustice and suffering, we talk about it because we believe things should be otherwise, right? All of us are exiles from the Garden. We were made for a world like that, and we find ourselves in a world where we are outside of it.

And what’s caused that? Sin. Straight up. Listen, the main character in the story of Genesis and the whole of the Bible is God. It’s all about Him, all about His glory. Everything we’ve talked about that is so crucial to human life: our work, our rest, our identity, and so on, all points back to Him. It’s all about Him. I know that seems simplistic, but it’s important because we almost always make the mistake of thinking that life is primarily about us, about our fulfillment. But that’s not the case. Life is about God. In Colossians, Paul says that all things have been made through Christ and all things have been made for Him (Colossians 1:16). It’s all about Him, and our lives find their meaning and purpose as we live in His presence and reflect His character, displaying His glory n this world.

However, sin is absolutely contrary to Him. When we sin, we separate ourselves from Him, we align ourselves with the serpent instead of Him. He is holy. Impurity and sin cannot co-exist with Him. It’s like Isaiah said: “your iniquities have separated you from your God, your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things.” (59:2-3) Sin is what causes Adam and Eve to be driven out of the sanctuary. It’s what causes them to become exiles. It is the logical result of them grasping after independence from God.

And this fractured relationship means every other relationship is fractured. Think about it. If we were made for Him, for His presence, and we separate ourselves from that, then the rest of life cannot work as it’s meant to. Our relationships with others suffer because we are seeking our own glory instead of His. We don’t treat them the way we were created to. Our relationship with creation suffers because we have lost the ability to reflect His image and rule as He rules. Our self-perceptions suffer because we no longer see ourselves the way He does. All of the stuff we talked about in the beginning, the “curse” is just an outworking of the fractured relationship with God.

And then there’s this: death, as well, is a result of that fundamental broken relationship. That’s what we read here. Because of their sin, Adam and Eve no longer have access to the tree of life. As long as they were in the Garden, death was not a concern. Wasn’t a reality. Wasn’t part of their world. But because of their sin and their exile from the Garden, death is now part of their existence. “From dust you are and to dust you will return”, says God. And in some ways, this is a mercy from God. God keeps Adam and Eve from living forever in a world stained and corrupted by sin. That’s mercy. But it’s also judgment. After all, why is death the consequence of sin? Because when we cut ourselves off from the source of all life, death is the inevitable result. God is the one who breathes into us, He’s the one in whom, Paul says in the NT, “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). So when we declare our independence from Him, death is the result. And death comes to us all, and it comes to us in all kinds of ways.

Which raises the question: why does death come the way it does? Why are there tornadoes and earthquakes and disease and cancer and terrorists and murderers? This is a major problem people have with the idea of God. How can a good God allow this to exist in the world? This might be an even bigger problem if you don’t believe in a g/God, because where does any sense of justice come from? What is “good” and “evil” in an objective sense if there is no God? Things just are, you can’t complain about suffering. With God, we would say He gives free choice to humans, and that humans are able to inflict suffering on others because He’s given them the freedom to sin. And we would say that for whatever reason natural evil exists, God can use it to draw people to Himself. 

Through the prophet Amos, God spoke to Israel and told them that despite the hardships they had experienced, they hadn’t turned to Him. “Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, destroying them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord” (Amos 4:9). You see, there is a worse fate than physical suffering, a worse fate than natural disaster, a worse fate even then death. Separation from God, alienation from Him, is the worst thing that can happen to us.

One and a half years ago, when I first preached this sermon, I spoke in this section about the coronavirus. And I talked about the immense fear that had grabbed ahold of people. I talked about the shortage of toilet paper as evidence for that. I talked about how the prospect of death was already terrifying people. Again, this was in early March of 2020, when besides the toilet paper thing, life in society was still “normal”.

As I wrote in my updated intro, none of us knew what kind of turn all of this would take. Specifically, I could not have told you that the fear of death would prompt such wide-sweeping and dramatic societal changes. Changes that would not only be tolerated, but welcomed and sought after. If there is one thing we have learned about humanity in the last year and a half, it is that we will do just about anything and everything to avoid even the possibility of death.

I don’t deny that most of us experience the fear of death. There’s probably even more of us who dread the thought of losing a loved one to something like COVID. But here’s the thing, according to the Bible, and I need to say it even if it sounds odd: the greatest tragedy is not that people would die from the coronavirus. The greatest tragedy is that people would die still alienated and separated from Him. According to the Bible, when we resist God through our lives, He honors that choice for all eternity. And an eternity apart from Him is far worse than whatever suffering we may experience in this world. Again, that’s not to say suffering isn’t real and that it isn’t awful and unpleasant. But it is to say that there is something deeper. Life is about God, and so life without God, life outside the Garden, is the most serious consequence of sin.

3. Good news

Whew! Well, now that we’re all feeling so positive about our world, shall we conclude? No! You want me to keep talking! You want me to tell you some good news! There’s actually a lot of it.

There’s good news in this passage. For instance, we’ve already talked about how the serpent will lose. He will be subjected to humiliation. That’s good news for humans. God’s blessing on humans to multiply is also not gone. Adam names Eve the mother of the living, and in the next chapter we will see children. Life still exists in the world because of God’s mercy. The ground will still produce food, even if it’s at a greater price. God still speaks to humans, still guides them, as the next chapter will show. Even look at the clothing: Adam and Eve had covered themselves with fig leaves. I would imagine that fig leaves aren’t the best and most comfortable clothing. So God gives them something better. He takes the skins of an animal and covers their shame. I’ll say that again in a different way so you can catch it: what we read about here is a death that covers over the shame of sin for Adam and Eve.

And that brings us to the good news outside of this passage. We find in the New Testament that God has provided an even greater covering for our shame: through the death of Jesus, we are clothed in His righteousness. If our trust is in Jesus, then when God looks at us, He no longer sees our sin and shame. He sees the purity and righteousness of His Son Jesus. We are clothed in purity and holiness because Jesus died in our place. We’ve talked about how Jesus delivers the death blow to the serpent. At the cross, the serpent struck at Jesus, but through His faithfulness and through His resurrection, He has overcome the serpent. He’s crushed His head, won the decisive battle. When we are in Jesus, we are victors in the battle with the serpent.

And then there’s this: the world that we have been exiled from, the world represented by the Garden, the world where God’s presence consumes and we walk in perfect communion with Him, has not been lost forever. But instead, a day is coming when God will make all things new. And everyone who has put their trust in Jesus will live forever in the world that we were made for, the world where we finally truly belong.

Revelation 22, the last book of the Bible, tells us this:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life,as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³ No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.⁴ They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Revelation 22:1-5

This is the promise. No more curse. No more death. No more broken relationships. Peace with others, with creation, and most importantly, peace and communion with God. We live in a world right now that is stained by sin in every way. We see it all around. But God has done something about it, and He is doing something about it, and He will do something about it. Fellow exiles, put your trust in Jesus and know that you were made for a world that He alone can bring you into.

*Biblical insights mainly gleaned from three commentaries: Bruce Waltke (Genesis, 2001), John Walton (NIV Application Commentary, 2001), and Victor Hamilton (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1990), as well as Iain Provan (Seriously Dangerous Religion, 2014)