So, open in your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 3, as we continue moving through this portion of God's Word. And today, we're looking at verses 14 through 21. So, hear God's word. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On 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 her offspring, your offspring, and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. and to Adam he said because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you you shall not eat of it cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. This morning we look at God's punishment on Adam and Eve's sin. What's changed because of sin. How it helps us to understand the world we live in. And in many ways, it's a difficult text. It seems to be saying the very opposite of that popular saying, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And the world around us, they certainly know the effects of sin, even if they try to call it something else, something different. They know about the miseries in this life. They sing songs about it. They write about it. They make movies about it. I saw one quote that I thought I'd share. They tried to add a little humor to it. It was still pretty morbid. This author said, Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order. Now, we could ask, is he wrong? Isn't that what we just read here? Read about what will happen. Or we could say, how is he wrong? Well, as with many things, there is some truth there. And yet, there's something missing, isn't it? Something missing that we also find in our text. It's not so much that that writer is wrong, but what he says is incomplete. It doesn't give the full story. Life is hard. It's not always so hard. Often when people ask us, how are you, we can say, better than I deserve. But there certainly are many hard times, many very hard times. And we only have to look briefly at the newspaper to know that there is this great extent of misery in our world. And so it's proper for us to ask why. Why is this so? And the Bible is very clear on that. Very clear in our passage. It's because of sin. Now, in the Greek myth about Pandora and Pandora's box, there was this woman who was created and she was given a box and told not to open it, but she was too curious and so she opened it. And what happened? Out flew all of the evils and diseases and such that the world knows. Well, the Bible tells it differently, doesn't it? Sin and evil, they're not a thing, they're not a substance, they're not something that has escaped and gone into this world and attacked us in so many different ways, wrecking havoc. The Bible is clear that sin, what is it? It's disobedience, it's rebellion from God, and it results in punishment. It results in curse from God. The Bible is very clear. Life is hard because God has made it hard. He punished Adam and Eve and all of us, their descendants. He brought this common curse upon all humanity. But that isn't the whole story, as we said. To say that life is hard isn't everything our text has to tell us. Life is hard, but it isn't that ultimate punishment of hell. It isn't that punishment that we deserve for our sin. Life is hard, but wonder of wonders, it still is life. There still is life. Life is hard, but there still is hope in this life. Because this God that we read about who punishes sin, he also reconciles sinners. And we see that also in our passage. And so as we look over our passages, these curses that we could call them, we'll divide them according to the ones spoken to the serpent, the woman and the man, and then look at that response of Adam and God at the end. So, we start out with God speaking to the serpent. And we must note that he speaks to this serpent in a different way. Last time we read how God approached Adam and Eve looking for their confession, looking for that for restoration. but he doesn't ask the serpent why he's done this. No, he speaks right away in judgment. And we see something unique in that he is cursed. We must keep that in mind as we look at Adam and Eve and the hardships that are put upon them. They are not cursed as the serpent is. And we could also ask, if God wasn't trying to restore the serpent, why does he speak to him at all? Why not directly punish? And in this, it's because Adam and Eve needed to hear this curse on the serpent. Because in that curse, it also spoke of them and their future. This curse provides a backdrop so that they can see the limits of God's punishment on them, but also they can see God's future plan. Now, as we think about this curse on the serpent, we have to remember that this is a particular serpent. This isn't a curse on snakes in general, but it was on a particular serpent, a particular snake, one who was unique, we saw last time in his speaking, one who was unique in his rebelling against God. This snake, this serpent that we read in the rest of the Bible is identified as Satan or the devil. And so, this curse on this particular snake, we shouldn't take it as a curse on snakes in general. It applies to Satan, but it does apply to more than Satan. It applies to those who are his seed. Those who would be of Satan's kind in rebelling against God. It applies to the devil and his seed. And yet as we read it, it's spoken of in terms of a snake, isn't it? We read of going on your belly. We read of eating dust. We read of trying to crush the head and striking the heel. All imagery that is pulled from a snake. It's told in these physical features of a snake. And so what does that mean? Does that mean the Bible here is explaining why snakes don't have legs? How they changed because Satan used the serpent. God therefore changed the form of the serpent. I don't think that's the way we should go. Instead, if we look at what came before and what comes now, it's better to see that the serpent had that reputation of being crafty and the devil had used the serpent because of that. We saw that in chapter 3, verse 1. The serpent more crafty than any other beast of the field. But there's something else that in the Bible was proverbial about the serpent. Not only were they proverbial as something that was crafty, but they were proverbial as an image of something that was defeated, humbled, and subjected. And this was because they were on the ground. Because of their physical posture, they were this image of somebody who was defeated. And so, in Micah, Micah 7, 17 through 18, when it speaks of God's acts that he's going to do in the future, he says, The nations shall see, and they shall be ashamed of all their might. They shall lay their hands on their mouths, their ears shall be deaf. Then they shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth. They shall come trembling out of their strongholds. They shall turn in dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of you. And so in that passage, the serpent and his position on the ground, that's used as the analogy of how these other nations would then approach Israel. It doesn't mean that our biblical authors thought the snakes actually licked dust or ate dust, but it's that position of their faces on the ground, their faces in the dust. And so, Isaiah uses a similar image just of the people in Isaiah 49, 23, as he speaks of those who will be defeated, With their faces to the ground, they shall bow down to you and lick the dust of your feet. And so this imagery of a snake is used as the image of Satan's defeat. This is the way that Satan, who thought he would be crafty and so used a form of an animal that was more crafty than all the other livestock, Now, in defeat, he uses this animal that's more cursed than all livestock and all beasts of the field. And so I think we should properly understand verse 14, his going on the belly, his eating dust all the days. That's speaking of the doom that is coming to Satan. The doom that God will bring about in his plan. His future defeat, he had raised himself up, and yet God would bring him low. God would make him subdued. And the image of a serpent continues even in 15, in the image of strife there. And as an analogy, there's animals that cause certain reactions, don't they? Or they usually cause certain reactions. We were camping with friends a while back, and it was dark, and there was a little mouse that was trying to get all the food under our chairs. Well, the mouse wasn't the only one squeaking. There were many others around that were a little nervous because of that mouse. And, you know, so mice, they cause a certain reaction in us. Well, the same thing is usually true with snakes. Snakes in people most often don't get along. They don't mix. There's hostility between them, often for good reason, but sometimes just because we don't like them. And so that's the imagery we get there in 15, And it's even clearer in that second part as that hostility is vividly portrayed in trying to crush, trying to kill the snake and the snake trying to strike, to bite, to crush the heel. And that is the hostility that God says he will put. He will reinsert between his people and the devil. It's a hostility that should have been there, that was there, we could say, from the beginning. And it should have led Adam and Eve to destroy the devil when he came. When he came trying to lead them astray. But Adam and Eve, what did they do? They chose to follow the serpent, the devil, instead of God. They listened to his voice. And in that, they in many ways became aligned with him. They became followers of him. But God, here, he announces he will put an end to that. Put an end to that alliance. That he will reclaim this people for himself. He will reconcile them to himself and make them hostile to Satan, to his lies, to his schemes. And that is the hostility that is then played out in the rest of the Bible, in redemptive history. The hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And it's a struggle that we know the end of. The end of the devil being crushed. Him being defeated. Him eating dust. But we see also it's not without cost, as the one crushing is also said to be crushed. And so, as we look at this curse on the serpent, we can rightly see in it a promise, a hope for Adam and Eve, that God would do something new, That He would raise up a seed. That He would raise up a descendant for Adam and Eve. That the devil would be destroyed through Him. And also, through Him, they would be restored. They would be restored. The animosity that they had would be done away with. They would be reconciled. And so in verse 16, God goes on and He speaks to the woman. And as we said, the curse on the serpent in the background helps us properly understand what God says. That devil was cursed. Cursed are you. His doom is sure. But now we look at Eve. And she is not cursed. And yet she is punished. And it's with regard to her unique role as a mother. The great blessing of childbearing, God says, will now be accompanied with pain and danger. Now, I'll admit, I have no idea how much it hurts to give birth. But I do know that in the Old Testament, the imagery of labor pains, it's used to describe someone who's seized with the greatest pains. It was the paradigm image of pain. And we read of women dying in childbirth. And we see the pain of that. And I do know a little bit in that my mother, she was a nurse in the labor and delivery department. And one story she had is that women who would come in and English was their second language, they could communicate fine until labor started. And then they forgot all their English. As they were overcome with that pain, they could no longer communicate. that. They could only speak in their first language. Now we can say, well, modern medicine has come. It's helped a lot, hasn't it, to reduce pains and dangers. There's now a thing called an epidural that helps block pain. And we have C-sections that save many troubled pregnancies. And better care has lowered the death rate for both mothers and for babies. But we all know that the pain and the danger is still there. And as we think of this increase in pain, it's proper to include in it other aspects. The Bible clearly knows of barrenness, of not being able to have children. And again, modern medicine has made many advances, but they're very limited. And we still know of miscarriages and stillborns and a host of other complications that can go along with this most incredible gift of new life. Children are this blessing from the Lord and yet this childbearing process, it's a constant reminder of the effects of sin, of God's punishment for sin. And yet, despite the pain and the danger, it's essential to see here that God's punishment, it wasn't what Eve deserved. She deserved so much more. We all deserved so much more. What is the surprise? The surprise is really that there would still be children. Even though there would be this pain, it wasn't the death threatened for disobedience. The death with which the serpent was cursed. In fact, it was through this process, through this pain that she would now experience, that God would raise up that seed that he had talked of in verse 15. That seed who would crush the serpent. Now, the second part of verse 16 is a little more debated, you could say. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. It's a little more difficult to decide what precisely it means. Most interpreters agree in general that it refers to the strife that would now be in marriage. but the details are a little more difficult. And based on chapter 4, verse 7, where we get something very similar spoken to Cain, it seems best to take the first part, what is this desire? Desire shall be for your husband. It seems best to take that as a desire for control, to have authority over. And in this, it very much reflects the nature of Adam and Eve's sin, doesn't it? Adam and Eve, their sin of eating, that was an attempt to throw off God, to throw off his control, to throw off his authority. And so that sin, it will continue to bear fruit as Eve and all the women who had come from her will have that similar desire to throw off the authority of their husband, to not be the helper, but to be the head. But the last phrase is what's most debated. And I would argue it's best understood as what is proper, what should be contrary to the woman's desire. Your desire will be to rule over your husband, but he should rule over you. Others argue that the ruling there refers to an oppressive, wrongful use of headship that the woman would have to endure. And we certainly know that that is all too common in the world after sin. But the word used there for rule doesn't have to be taken in that way. It's usually not of a wrongful action, but of legitimate authority. But either way that we take this, one of the realities after the sin of Adam and Eve is that not only is life hard, marriage is hard. You take two sinful people and you try to unite them as one flesh. That seems like a recipe for disaster. And so, it's only as we go into it knowing our own sinful hearts. Only going into it knowing that we have been forgiven and thereby we can forgive. Only knowing the grace of God can there be any hope of moving towards that intimacy that marriage calls for. And as we even think of that, we should also not miss that there is this grace shown and that marriage is still continuing. This union of marriage that God created, it is still continuing even though it now bears all of these marks, all of these effects of God's judgment on sin. Now, God continues to the man in verse 17. And again, we see something similar in that the man is not cursed like the serpent was. Not cursed just as Eve wasn't cursed. But instead, the ground is cursed. Because you ate from that tree that I forbid, now the curse will be on the ground so that you will only eat of it in pain. And that's what verses 18 and 19, they fill this out. What is this curse of the ground going to be like? What does it mean to eat only in pain? Well, God's curse on the ground means that it doesn't produce what we want it to, when we want it to. It's best to take, verse 18 there, the thorns and thistles. It wasn't some special thing that God created then, that there weren't thorns and thistles beforehand. But instead, now a farmer plants a field, And instead of getting just the grain he wanted or the trees he wanted, now he gets also weeds. He gets these thorns. He gets these thistles. God will cause them to grow in his garden where he doesn't want them to be. And as we look at 18, the second part of that, and you shall eat the plants of the field, How does that correspond? Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. Authors do various things with that. One is to say it's contrasting with the garden, that there they ate fruit, now they have to eat the stuff of the field. I thought of taking it as the curse of salad, that you now have to eat salad. No, really I like salad, as long as it has meat. But what it's probably good to take it as is it's in the contrast with the beginning there. That thorns and thistles it will produce even as you are eating of these plants that you try to bring out. That in your farming, as you seek to cultivate these plants in the field, now you will have thorns and thistles. And so really the image is the same as at the beginning of 19. The 18 and the beginning of 19, very similar. The thorns and thistles it will bring, and only in that way will you eat. Well, that means that only by the sweat of your brow, the sweat of your face, will you eat that bread that you seek to cultivate. That food that you need, it will only come with difficulty. It will only come with hardship. And the Israelites, they certainly knew of this. From all that we can know, it seems that most of the time, they as farmers were just trying to get enough food for their families. There were times of abundance, but they were rather rare. And some of the stuff we take for granted was also rare. Meat, it was probably only for special occasions. And anything sweet, not candy, but anything sweet just as honey or sweet fruit, it was more of a rare treat. And so children, can you imagine that? Life without candy, and when hamburgers and hot dogs are only for special occasions, it's quite a different life. And I think some of you in the congregation probably can remember times when food was scarce, when it was similar to that. But I imagine most of you are like me, that there has never been a time like that. For most of us, the problem isn't too little food, it's too much food, is it? There were no Israelite diet plans. They didn't need those, even though we do now. And so we can see in that that there's a difference in how this curse affects. How does it still affect us? Have we overcome it? Those of you who still grow crops, you know that it still is a struggle against weeds, against the weather. But most of us aren't farmers. It's annoying when we have something other than grass grow up in our lawn. We don't like that. The thorns and the thistles there. Flower beds, they're a nightmare to keep weed free. But kids, when's the last time you went to Vons or Costco with your parents and they tried to reach for bread and they got thorns and thistles? They aren't there. They aren't there on the shelves. And so this description of the thorns and the thistles, we really need to take it in a broader way. Because what is it? It's a particular illustration of this creation-wide change of the way God upholds the world, the way he governs the world. It's a change in his providential care. And so, even if we are not farmers, we still experience it each and every day. Maybe the most spectacular way is in the destruction we see through severe weather. This year, there have been many tornadoes in the U.S. They've destroyed homes, schools, and businesses. And you kids know of that as you held a walk-a-thon, many of you, to raise money to help those. Well, God is in control of the weather, isn't He? God is the one who sends tornadoes, doesn't He? And the destruction that they now bring is because of this sin of Adam and Eve, because of this curse on the ground. And we can see it in other great events, earthquakes, tsunamis. But we see it even in little things, don't we? Those of us who live in houses, we know that tree roots can get in your pipes and crack them. We know that termites can get in and eat away the structure of your house. The ground can settle and your house is suddenly crooked. Mold can grow and then you can't live there. The list is almost endless. We can go on with many examples in our lives and we need to see that that is the application here. That this verse really applies to all of our life, all of our work, all of our daily activities. No matter what kind they are, after sin, because of God's curse, they are now to some degree toilsome, difficult, Part of God's punishment for sin. And yet, again, we shouldn't miss the fact that God still speaks about them being able to grow stuff. He still speaks about them being able to have bread to eat. That their labors, though difficult, will produce something. It is not the blessedness of the Garden of Eden, but it is also not what they deserved, that torment of hell itself. And as we think about this, we need to emphasize that in this God's direction to the man, this curse on the ground, that's not the origins of work. We were made to work. Work was part of God's plan from the beginning. It is not a curse. It is not a punishment. The change in our work, that it's now frustrating, that it's now difficult, that is this curse. And in this, it's very parallel to childbearing. That childbearing and work, they were both part of what God was created to do, what God created man to do. But now, even though those continue, they will now only be done in pain. And as we look at the end of verse 19, we come to something that goes beyond even our toils and our cares in this world. It's that not only our houses wear out, not only our fields are invaded, but even our own bodies, they are afflicted. Thorns and thistles, they may sprout in the ground, but we have germs, we have bacteria, we have infections, we have cancer, we have diseases that grow in our body. In our bodies, they become weak, they wear out. and we die. We were made from dust and we turn back into dust. And God is in control. He's in control of each and every cell in our body, each and every disease that attacks us. It all comes from His hand because of this punishment for sin. Now we get the response. The Bible speaks of Adam as our representative. When he sinned, it affected us all, his children. His sin brought death into the world for us all. We are born in sin into a world that bears God's curse against sin, and we ourselves show us to be his children each and every day by our sin. We've never known the innocence that Adam was created in. We've never known the blessedness of the world that God first made before sin. We can only read about it and imagine. But in verse 20, we see Adam providing a model for us. He shows us something. He shows us how to respond to this life in which we're in. God came to Adam and Eve here in these curses and He said, Because you have sinned, now your life is going to be hard and then you are going to die. And what does Adam do? He didn't cry out against God. He didn't complain. He didn't stomp off to his room and slam the door. What did he do? He named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all living. Now children, Adam responded to God's judgment by naming his wife Mrs. Life. That's what Eve means. It means life. And this was a response of faith. Adam knew what he deserved, hell itself. And what God had described was not it. Instead, Adam had heard a gracious judgment, a gracious curse, we could say. Despite its description of hardship and pain and death, It spoke of the continuity of life. And most of all, it spoke of a restoration of their relationship with God. And what did Adam do? He believed in God's Word. He believed in His promise. And thus, he named his wife, Life. He named his wife, Eve. Adam responded in this faith and then God responds to him. God responds by covering his nakedness. Adam and Eve, they had been naked and unashamed in creation, but sin destroyed all of that. As sinners, they needed a covering. They had made their own feeble attempt. They had used those fig leaves earlier. But now God steps in. God Himself clothes them. Their nakedness that was exposed because of sin, God had now covered. And so we see in our text that God revealed the good news to Adam and Eve. A good news that we know in so much more detail, don't we? We know that the seed of the woman was ultimately pointing to Jesus Christ, God incarnate. That he would crush the devil. He would do it by dying. And then rising from the grave in glory. And that he clothes all who believe in him with his righteousness. That through him we can be reconciled to God. And that we wait for that day when all will be made new. When the pain spoken of to Adam and Eve that afflicts us now will be taken away. When Jesus, our Lord and Savior, when he returns on those clouds of heaven. And yet, when you go out from here, go out in this week, life will still be hard. And you're still going to die. How do you respond? Do you dwell on those miseries, on that pain? Do you curse the God who is in control of them for the way he has inflicted you? Or do you call him the Lord of life even amidst the curse of death? Because you know that even though life is hard and then you die, that that is not the whole story. You believe in a Savior who died for you and who is preparing a place for you in glory. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we often don't dwell on the severity of our sin and the punishment it deserved. And thereby we often fail to see your mercy and your grace. And so we ask that you continue to work in us through your Spirit. so that our eyes are opened so that we see that you are a merciful and loving God. Though we bear the temporary and not the full weight of what our sin deserves now in the common curses of this life, we know that we can have a true hope because Jesus Christ came while we were yet his enemies and he has borne your wrath for our sin and he has earned for us the glories of heaven. May that encourage us each and every day. May we know your mercies are new each and every morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.