Thursday, August 11, 2011

The Fall (part 3)

The Fall (part 3)

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<< Genesis 3 >>
King James Version


15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Sermon

So we carry on from where we left off. Adam and Eve have both eaten from the tree of the Knowledge of good and Evil, which God had commanded then not to do.

The Lord has found out what they had done, and points to Adam for an explanation. Adam Immediately blames it all upon Eve, and Eve in turn shifts the blame onto the Serpent who is the Devil incarnate.

And now The Lord turns to Satan and starts to curse him for what he has done.

15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Satan had hoped that in tempting Adam and Eve into sinning, he would procure the allegiance of the whole human race in his battle against God. And indeed he did do to an extent, but in this passage God talks about the seed or descendants of Eve who will be fighting against Satan. This seed that is mentioned is the church and all Christians.

Also here is what has been termed “the first Gospel” because it talks of Jesus coming to this world, and though Satan will bruise Jesus’ heel, or cause Jesus great pain, which is the crucifixion on the cross, yet Jesus will have the ultimate victory over Satan when He gives Satan the fatal blow over the head, which is when He arose from the dead and claimed a portion of the human race who will go with Him to reign forever in glory!

What a blessing that even in the midst of all the curses, there is yet the promise of Salvation! Adam and Eve would not have know what this passage meant, yet they would have known that it was a promise to them that one day they would get their own back on the Devil. And doubtless through the hard years that followed them they would again and again pray that the Lord would even come now and crush the Devil’s head. But The Lord had His set time to favour Zion and that time would not come for about 4000 years.

God is never late, nor is He early, He arrives precisely when He means to!

16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

I will never know the pains that a woman goes through when she brings forth a child. I know that it is extremely painful, but it is something I can never go through myself.

In the same way we can never really understand what another human being is going through in the path of life. And because we shall never fully understand, much wisdom is needed when talking to someone else about their trials and afflictions. My advice is that you listen more than you speak. Sometimes people just want to know that there is someone who cares.

So here the Lord stops talking to the Devil, and turns to Eve, who probably thought that God bought into her little scheme of pinning all the guilt onto the Devil. And Eve has her turn to be cursed.

Do you realise that all of us as human beings are cursed? We inherit all these curses that Adam and Eve were given. Don’t believe me? Just try having a baby, then you’ll believe me.

“he shall rule over thee”

Maybe at the beginning of creation, man and woman were created equal. Perhaps there needed to be no hierarchy because everyone did that which was right in the sight of God, but when man started doing that which was right in his own eyes there needed to be some kind of hierarchy so that we had someone other than ourselves checking to see whether what we were doing is right.

17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Now here God turns to Adam.

Here God curses the ground, that it will be very hard to make money. There are no easy jobs are there? But before the creation life was great, work was great; no-one had to do anything they didn’t like. But sin’s turned all that the other way around, and work’s become a bore.

But everyone must work to live, this is Biblical teaching. And it’s in hard work that we have satisfaction.

Thank God if He allows you to have a job which you really enjoy. I have a great job! I work as a Health Care Assistant at a hospital, and I’m helping people all day long, I find great satisfaction in doing it, even though sometimes it can be quite physically demanding.

18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

Thorns and thistles are very prickly, and really hurt if you touch them. This is kind of like temptations. Work is full of temptations. For me as a young man, there are continuously lovely girls around with loose morals, and you begin to find yourself thinking wicked thoughts about them. But like the thorns and thistles, it really is best not to touch them at all. “Touch not the unclean thing”.

“The herb of the field”

Even though the Lord has planted thorns and thistles, yet it is a mercy that He also gives us herbs to eat.

Herbs are a spice, it flavours food. A Christian’s food is the Word of God. When God adds spices to the word, it is like when we hear a minister preach about a certain subject, and the way in which he preaches gives you a whole new perspective on the passage so that you see it in different light. Now the passage is no more dry food, it has become seasoned because you understand it better.

19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Work’s hard and indeed our whole life will be hard. That doesn’t mean we can’t be joyful all the time though. You might remember that in Philippians 4:4 Paul exhorts us to “rejoice in The Lord always”.

“dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”

This is referring to the 6th day when God created Adam out of dust. And one day we shall all die and our bodies will rot in a grave, and bacteria will eat at our corpses until there is nothing left of us but dust.

Will anyone remember us after we are gone? What really is the point in life? These questions are probably the questions everyone asks themselves when they first realise that life is short and they will soon die. If you are asking these questions, I advise that you read carefully through the book of Ecclesiastes. In this book Solomon looks at the meaning of life, and finally comes to a gracious conclusion, which should be more than suitable for the average person of today.

20And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

The name Eve means “living”.

21Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

Remember that they realised that they were naked and were ashamed, and so they made themselves clothes out of fig leaves. Now God takes the skin or fur of an animal and makes it into clothes for Adam and Eve. Notice that this is the first ever recorded death in the Bible. God must have killed an animal to skin it. I wonder whether Adam and Eve looked at what this signified: the death of one to cover the sins of another!

22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life

“one of us”

Again this is talking about the Trinity, God in three persons, not about multiple gods.

“know good and evil”

The tree of knowledge really did work; it was not just a symbolic thing.

So now that Adam and Eve had knowledge, they realise that they should have taken from the tree of life instead of the tree of knowledge, and would have corrected their mistake, had God not have thrown them out of the Garden of Eden and barred them from ever getting to the tree of life again.

And God placed cherubim to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Cherubim are a form of angel, we don’t know too much about them, but it seems that they are lower rank, and they would take their orders from Michael who is the prince of the angels. And as we learn from this chapter that they are extremely powerful as they withstood any attempt of mankind to try and enter the Garden of Eden.

So this is the last we hear of the Garden of Eden.

The garden is nowhere to be seen on any of our modern day maps. It is my opinion that it was destroyed in the flood which seemed to have rearranged a bit of the geography of the land.

Well we have come to the end of the chapter. God willing in the next sermon we will carry on the narrative from Chapter 4 of Genesis.

I hope and trust that this has been of use to someone’s never dying soul. And that God will use it for His own honour and glory.

Amen!

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