The God Who Is There

Pronounces Explicit Curses

The First Curse: To The Serpent

Genesis 3:14 Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all 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.

This does not mean that all women will hate snakes. It does mean that from the woman, from the human race, will ultimately come the seed that will crush the serpent’s head. By going to the cross, Jesus will ultimately destroy this serpent, this devil, who holds people captive under sin, shame, and guilt. He will crush the serpent’s head by taking their guilt and shame on Himself, for us.

The apostle Paul writes, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (Romans 16:20) There is a sense in which Christians, by living under the gospel and being reconciled to God because of the gospel, are destroying the devil and his work.

The Second Curse: To The Woman

Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe. With pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

The first categorical command that God had given to the man and woman was “Be fruitful and increase in
number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28) But now, this side of the fall, even this most fundamental
of rights and privileges, part of their very being, now becomes pain-filled. The whole created order was distorted and even introducing new life is bound up with loss.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (3:16) Here in the wake of the fall, the woman desired to control her husband, and he ruled over her with a certain kind of brutal force. Neither was God’s perfect plan. There is sin on both sides: she wants to control, and he, being physically
stronger than she is, overpowers her.

The two verbs that are used together here occur as a pair in only one other place within the first five books of the Bible. In Genesis 4 the verb is used when God tells Cain he must be careful, that “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, to control you, to manipulate you, to boss you around, but you must rule over it.” (Gen. 4:7)

Here we see the destruction of the marriage relationship because of sin in this world. When you read on through the following chapters in Genesis, you also see: the first homicide, the first double murders, the first polygamy, and eventually the first genocide. On and on and on and on, all because at the very beginning someone said, “I will be God.”

The Third Curse: To Adam, The Man

Genesis 3:17 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. 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.”

Adam listened to the woman instead of to God. At the end of the day, each of us must give prime allegiance to God Himself, to God alone. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” (3:17) The whole created order of which we are a part is now not working properly. It is under a curse, subjected by God Himself to death and decay.

The Long-Term Effects That Flow from This Rebellion (Genesis 3:20–24)

Genesis 3:21 “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” They had already used fig leaves. But if God uses garments of skin, then blood has been shed, a sacrificial animal.

At this stage in the Bible’s storyline there is no system of sacrifice; that comes later. God knows that they need to be covered. They have so much shame to hide. In mercy, He does not say to them, ‘Take off those stupid fig leaves. If you just expose yourselves and be honest with one another, we can all get back together again and live happily ever after.’ There is no way back. He covers them with something more
durable, but at the price of an animal that sheds its blood.

This is the first sacrifice in the long trajectory of bloody sacrifices that reaches all the way down to the coming of Jesus. When He appears, He is declared to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) By His blood sacrifice, by His death, we are covered over. Our shame and our guilt are both addressed because Jesus died in our place. A lamb cannot do that.

Where does that leave us today?

The person who is most offended in this chapter is God. Their and our primary problem is guilt before God. Our first and most serious need is to be reconciled to God—a God who pronounces death upon us because of our willfully chosen rebellion. We have many horizontal needs, problems with others, but the greatest need is to be reconciled to Him. We need someone to save us.

God promised Adam & Eve He would correct it.
He Did! Jesus at the Cross