Once again there is a lot revealed to us in these verses. I have a bias, I know , yet I find these verses so deep I can be comforted by them at any and every point of my emotional life. Because both the promise and the predicament - and the depth and power of both - is reveled to us in just the first 3 chapters of this book. We have seen that God created us good, indeed very good, and we have seen how God wished to walk with us in the garden of evening. We were to stroll with God among the creation that he gave us. Somehow, and this really is a mystery, all of that promise was undone by one question, “Did God really say?” Once this disaster comes to light God makes known quickly and clearly the implications of mankind’s foolishness.
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.15 And 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.”16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of 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.”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.
So much for Eden, it is gone now. I mentioned in my last post the first word is to the evil one. God says, to the serpent, you shall not win the day. But this battle in Genesis Chapter 3, as far as man is concerned, is lost. Woman is condemned to pain in childbirth and man to a life of toil. If there was a moment when we were not materialistic, not driven by work and consumption it was a moment in Eden that has now passed. From this point onwards we move from innocents who strolled naked at the side of God to workers and consumers who subdue the earth and make a living only by the sweat and toil.
Instead, we are banished from the place of peace and certainty and sent out into the world. We have to make our own way now. God does not walk at our side, behind us angels guard the gate to Eden, and we know for sure that the way back to Eden will not be simple nor will it be without cost. Blood will be spilt or we will remain outside for ever.
It is a dark story with little in the form of light to give a shadow of the hope to come. Only when God warns the serpent that one will come to crush him to we get any glimpse that all will be well. But even as yet we cast lonely shadows that stretch back to Eden as we walk East into the rising sun. Maybe that sun is also God’s promise of a new day and a new way back to Eden. In the rest of Genesis we will begin to see that journey unfolding.
God help us to recognise that we are outside of your care and your purpose. Eden is gone yet we long to be home. We are the prodigal. Strengthen us that we may lay hold of our Saviour Jesus and claim the life he so perfectly offers us. Allow us to live for His glory, allow us again to walk in Eden.
The Bible is filled with God’s Law. It’s everywhere you look. From Genesis to Revelation there are certain things that God wants us to do and certain things that He doesn’t want us to do. And we fail Him. We sin. We happily do everything that He tells us not to do, and grudgingly do some of the things that He wants us to do … and not very often.