Sermon; Genesis 3:14-24,

The Roots of the Kingdom:‘The Curse of God and the Seed of Woman’

We live in a world that imagines that it has freed itself from the constraints of traditional morality. We no longer feel the need to regulate our moral choices by any other standard than our own pleasures. We can conceive of no other moral boundaries than mere necessity. There are no necessary moral consequences for any given action, only better or worse results that may or may not be good for you or me.

This week, as we return to Genesis 3 we will consider the Bible’s teaching that sin does in fact have consequences. Fundamentally, the passage before us teaches that we are not the final judges to whom we give an account, God is. He holds us all accountable and has already pronounced sentence over our sin. But God, as we will see, does not leave us to sins consequences.

So turn back with me please to Genesis 3 and verse 14 to the end of the chapter.

Structurally, the passage is divided into four; the three curses, on Satan (vs. 14-15), the Woman (vs. 16), and on the Man (vs. 17-19), with the concluding narrative of God’s climatic judgments on the Adam and Eve (vs.20-24). And we will take each in turn and see how in each there is an emphasis on God judgement and God’s Grace, on sin’s consequences and sin’s solution, on our condemnation and on Christ’s Cross.

So first look with me at verses 14&15 and the verdict pronounced over the Serpent.

Some commentators have suggested that God brought Satan to the garden in the first place for Adam to judge and condemn him. Adam had been given a role as king to establish the kingdom of God on the earth. He was to judge Satan for his rebellion against the Lord God. But instead of judging him, Adam was deceived by him. And so now in verse 14 God steps in to do what Adam should have done, and pronounces the curse over the Serpent.

And that curse begins with a declaration that Satan will be humbled because of His part in our first parents fall into sin. Look at verse 14. Satan, we saw last week, had taken possession of an ordinary serpent. He came to her as one of the creatures of the field Adam had named, and over whom they had been given rule and authority. The Devil adopted the lowly and insignificant posture of a mere animal in order to put Eve off guard. ‘It’s only a lowly creature, and an especially lowly one at that, a mere snake.’ Everything about its posture and locomotion suggests its low station in the hierarchy of creatures God had made.

And so, cloaked with the appearance of humility, Satan deceived Eve. But now God condemns Satan to real humiliation. All the lowliness of a ‘mere snake’ will be his lot. He will be reduced to nothing more than a dust-licker and a belly crawler under the curse of God.

Satan is a wretched creature. He is not almighty, he is not everywhere at once; he stands already under the condemnation of God. He has been brought low in a wonderful anticipation of the final condemnation and judgement he will face on the last day.

Then there is the second part of the curse in verse 15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring (literally, seed) and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

In many ways the whole book of Genesis is the exposition of this one statement, as these two lines begin to develop, the offspring of the Serpent and the seed of the woman.  From the very first the children of Eve are divided into two groups. There’s Cain and then there is Abel, there are the Sons of God and the daughters of men. There are the offspring of Abraham and there are the Edomites, Ishmaelites and Canaanites. There is the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent.

In fact, in the book of Genesis the word used for offspring, ‘seed’, is used with a very special significance. It is used almost exclusively with reference to the covenant God made with Abraham and his offspring, his seed. In Genesis 17: 7, for example we read of God’s covenant in these terms, “ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your seed,( your descendants,) after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your seed after you”.  The word translated ‘offspring’ here is a covenant word.  It refers to covenant heirs. The seed of the woman are the heirs of the covenant.

Now that is remarkable because it intimates and hints to us, as it almost certainly did to Adam and Eve, that the Covenant Lord who is here judging Satan, is also promising them that He will make a new covenant with them, a covenant of grace, a remedial covenant, a covenant that will rescue them.  In Abraham’s Seed all nations of the earth will be blessed. In the Woman’s seed Satan’s head will be crushed.

In other words, the original covenant purposes of God, set in motion before the fall (to fill the earth with faithful covenant heirs of God and to subdue it, to extend Eden’s boundaries until the earth is full of the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea), will still be realised. God will bring from Eve a chosen line, a race of covenant heirs through whom the warfare with, and final destruction of, the Serpent would be executed. Nothing, not even sin, can destroy the plan of God.

And the enmity between Eve’s line and that of the Serpent will come to a climactic struggle between one individual seed of the woman, and the serpent himself (vs. 15). Arising from the elect descendants of Eve, One seed of the woman would come. Note the personal pronoun, ‘He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

Now who is this one seed of the woman through whom the great Serpent will finally be crushed? Who is the one seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed?  In the Greek version of the Old Testament the word for the woman’s seed is used only twice, here in Genesis 3:15, and again in Genesis 17:7 which speaks of the seed of Abraham and God’s covenant with them. So far as the ancient Greek Old Testament was concerned the two seeds are identical. So Paul, reflecting this understanding of the Old Testament, tells us in Galatians 3:16, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The scripture does not say ‘and to seeds’ meaning many people, but, ‘and to your seed’, meaning one person who is Christ.” 

Satan will meet his end, his head will be crushed, by the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ. Another Adam has come. He has fulfilled the obligations that rested originally on the first Adam to effect Satan’s judgement. The first Adam was deceived by the snake; he did not condemn the snake. But Christ came, and He stood firm in the face of the snake’s temptations. He was tempted in all points as we are, as Adam was, yet without sin. He accomplished finally the long awaited defeat of the devil. He crushed his head.

And notice the language of verse 15 here. As the Seed crushes the head of the serpent, the serpent strikes his heel. As the Lord Jesus effected His triumph over Satan, Satan bit deeply into the Lord Jesus. The destruction of the devil was not purchased lightly. It cost him his life!

And what a wonderful message the opening note of God’s judgement strikes! Think of it! Sin has only just entered God’s world. It’s effrontery, and it’s astonishing arrogance, are still bitingly fresh. And the Lord God comes amongst his creatures to pronounce judgement. It is a terrifying scene.

Yet, though the very first word the Lord God of the covenant pronounces is a note of Judgement it is not spoken over His covenant partners but over their mortal enemy the Devil. And it is a judgement full of intimations of his destruction, and our deliverance to come. While God thundered His condemnation of the Serpent, every blast of his justice was as song of grace and mercy to Adam and Eve.

How astonishing is God’s grace! Here are our rebel first parents, caught red handed. There is no escape, and judgement does indeed come, but it does not come without the free offer of forgiveness and cleansing through the seed of the woman.

Marvel at the mercy of God, that at the very beginnings of human history, God’s first response to our sin was wrath but not forgetting mercy. It was judgement but pointing to Christ. It was condemnation of the devil and a promise of salvation to men and women!

God has set out His stall from the first. Look at Genesis 3:15! This is the kind of God He is. He will come to all who would be free of sin’s guilt and pollution, and whisper words of forgiveness and acceptance so that , as Paul puts it later in Galatians, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”

Do you belong to Christ, the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham? Do you trust, and believe, and depend only on the full obedience and perfect self sacrifice of Christ to address your sin and guilt? Are you looking in simple faith to the seed of the woman? Then, and only then, can the triumph over the evil one promised to Adam and Eve be yours. It is to the heirs of Abraham by faith, those who trust in the Seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus, that Paul writes with such confidence, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).

Then secondly, look at the judgements of God on Eve and on Adam in verses 16-19.

And you will notice that they relate specifically to the original covenant calling God had bestowed on each of them. To the Woman, God pronounces judgement that will affect her calling as a mother and as a companion. To the man the curse affected his calling to be a king and priest over the garden sanctuary God had created for him to tend.

To the woman the judgement indicates increase of pain in childbearing, and no doubt also in childrearing. But place this curse into the context of what God had already revealed of His intentions to provide a redeemer who would crush Satan’s head. God had promised that one of her seed, her offspring would be that redeemer. The appointed pathway of her salvation, the arrival of the coming Seed of the Woman, the Lord Jesus Christ, was the very point at which she would suffer pain!

And here again we find language used in Genesis almost exclusively in a covenant context. In typical Hebrew idiom God’s words to Eve were literally ‘multiplying I will multiply your pain’. Now that construction would ring bells to any Hebrew listening to this account. At the very foundation of their existence as a people was the covenant God made with Abraham. And at the very foundation of the covenant with Abraham are the words literally translated, “multiplying I will multiply you”.  Immediately, ancient Hebrews would be thinking in terms of the covenant that bound them and their children to the Lord God.

In fact, God had already used this language in the covenant commands given before the Fall in Genesis1:28, ‘Go forth and multiply’. As we have already said, God has not abandoned his original aim of filling the earth with covenant children. Indeed He has made it central to His programme of redemption. Through one covenant child, the Lord Jesus Himself, salvation would come to all the earth. The Lord has taken this design up into all the subsequent unfoldings of His great covenant plan so that in every era God binds Himself to believers and their seed.

Now the implications of that fact are vital in shaping the way we treat our children as Christains. They are not unbelievers. They are not little worldlings needing conversion! They are not pagans outside f the covenants of promise! They are HEIRS of the covenant. They are the fruit of the promise implicit in the words of God to Eve and explicit in the covenants with Abraham, Moses, David and the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is therefore not a mark of a godly household to treat our children with suspicion, as though we expected to see them hate Christ and his law. They are His! They have been claimed as His possession and sealed as His own in their baptism. They are to be taught from their earliest moments that they belong to Christ, that He loves them, that He was given for them, that he has pledged Himself to them as their God and saviour. They are to be trained to daily renew the covenant signified and sealed to them in their baptism, with renewed repentance and faith.

I wonder if you have ever had the experience of being asked to recount your conversion and you feel terribly embarrassed. You have never been through the torturous emotions of someone who has led a wild and profligate life in rebellion and sin, but who is now brought to a sense of conviction of sin. You were raised to always love Jesus. As far as you are concerned you can’t help it, He has always been central to your whole world. You know that He loves you and can’t imagine life without Him. But when you are asked for your ‘conversion story’ you look apologetic, or maybe even ashamed, and say, ‘well I don’t know when I was converted’ and you hang your head in shame as the questioner moves on to someone who can give a more satisfying account of themselves. Certainly you can recall times when your love for Christ became so much more profound, and when you came to see more of the truth of sin’s loathsomeness and Christ’s loveliness. But conversion, as an experience that conforms to the patterns many modern evangelicals require, well that’s another thing entirely.

And so you begin to wonder, is my faith in Christ deficient? Am I missing something?

Do not feel ashamed! It is music to the ears of God when we are able to declare, ‘I was raised in the context of a covenant household. At the heart of my whole life, from earliest days, was faith in Jesus Christ. I have always believed, repented, worshipped, prayed, and obeyed. That inner love to the Master has always been there, and it has grown strong through the prayerful nurture of my family, within the church.” That is God’s original design for His people initiated in Eden and preserved in His covenant.

Your testimony reflects the way things were meant to be! Say boldly and proudly, “I am a covenant child! I have never lived away from the loving embrace of my Saviour. I have never lived as a rebel. Christ has been subduing my sin and teaching me holiness from infancy!” That is the greatest testimony in the world!

So Eve will still produce covenant children. Indeed eventually that covenant line would produce the Covenant Child, our Saviour. But it would cost her, notice. Sin has consequences and her calling as mother of the covenant people of God will bear the scars of her disobedience to God.

In fact the pains of bearing and raising children were designed to be a reminder to Eve of sin’s effects. Fulfilling that part of your God given callings, ladies, the calling to be mothers, will be marked by pain, both physical and emotional, as some of you know far better than I. That pain was designed by God to say one thing. The world is fallen. Things are to as they ought to be. Even doing that for which you were created (at least in part) is scarred by sins consequences.

The pain of being mothers is pain with a purpose. You are to look into the eyes of the children you love, and think of how costly that love can be at times. And then you are to feel the wrongfulness of that situation. How can something so precious be the cause of such heartache and sorrow and agony of body and mind? You are to say, ‘It is not supposed to be this way!   I NEED A RESCUER, a saviour who can undo all this.

Isn’t it a wonder then, that that Redeemer came onto the world by means of the very pain that served to remind Adam’s fallen race of their need of Him? Perhaps there is an echo of Genesis 3  when Simeon tells Mary concerning her soon to be born covenant child, the Lord Jesus, “a sword will pierce you own soul also” (Luke 2:35). It was by the agonies of Childbirth, that the entrance of Christ into the world, the Seed of the woman, was marked.

And then there is the second aspect of Eve’s calling. Look at verse 16b. She was designed to be a companion and helper to Adam. Now, as a consequence of her sin, part of which lay in rejecting her original role, God has created a second war. There is war between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But there is also a war of the sexes. The word ‘desire’ here, ‘your desire will be for you husband’ is not a positive word, it has the idea of a sinful desire to possess and dominate.  And so the judgment here is especially pointed because God declares that, no matter how strong that desire, the general pattern will be that man will sinfully dominate, oppress and control women.  We need no history lessons to see that this has been the case in almost every society throughout the world.

The point is this, whenever the war of the sexes erupts in our marriages, as it inevitably will at times, we are remember the fall. This is not how it ought to be. We need rescuing. We need a redeemer.

Then look at the curse on Adam. Look at verses 17-19.

I was recently asked by a visitor to the manse, as they looked over our garden, who will be the gardener. And I confess I groaned inside at the thought of grubbing in the dirt, incessantly pulling at weeds and trying to display a care for plants that only return my attentions with an uncanny ability to die rapidly. 

But when we turn to the curse on Adam here we realise that such feelings are not so trivial as they might first appear. God pronounces a curse on the ground so that, instead of the beautiful shrubs and plants the Lord caused to spring up in Eden, now only thorns and thistles will grow and the result will be painful toil.

The world will no longer be this supple and responsive garden. He will eat in the sweat of his brow. Exhaustion will be his lot. Every morsel that passes his lips will say to him, ‘You used to have access to such rich and delicious fruit; you once had access to the tree of Life itself. Look at what you have lost. Was your sin so very worth it Adam?’

When you come home each evening and you cast yourself down on the sofa and you let out that great groan that tells everyone that you are utterly exhausted so that you can barely move to prepare your meal, what is going on? God’s signpost is flashing yet again. This isn’t the way things are supposed to be. You need rescuing, you need a saviour; One who will come and usher in a new era, where, as Isaiah 55 tells us, instead of the thorn bush will grow up the pine tree and instead of the briers the myrtle will grow.

That One came, we know, in the Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that final age will dawn when he returns to usher in the new heavens and the new earth, where once again there will be free access to the Tree of life, “whose leaves will be for the healing of the nations.” Revelation 22:2

Then the curses reach their climax in verse 19, when God pronounces the ultimate word of condemnation. Adam would die. The serpent’s insinuations to the contrary notwithstanding, (‘you will not surely die’), sin is deadly. Adam, and all his heirs, will ‘return to the ground, since from dust were you taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return.’

The wages of sin is death. We are mortal. And we are mortal because we are sinners. When grief and loss pushes itself upon us, and we are unable to avoid the fact of our mortality, we must use our grief to make us hate its source all the more fiercely. Sin is the root of all our sorrow. Without sin human beings, taken from the dust, never would return to it. Doesn’t death and grief make sin appear in all its loathsome ugliness?Who could love something that kills like this?

We have, in the tears of personal grief, the most poignant reminder that things are not how they are supposed to be. We still need a redeemer and a rescuer who will destroy death and empty the grave of its power over all people.

That one came in Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day, so that we may joyfully declare with Isaiah and with Paul, “Death has been swallowed up in victory!” And ask with Hosea and Paul, “Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?”(1 Cor. 15:55)

Then look at verses 21-24. God brings his judgements to a final symbolic conclusion by barring the way back to Eden. He places Cherubim and a flaming sword at the east side of the garden over the entrance of Eden. Sin not only distorts family relationships, it not only alienates us from our environment, and it not only issues in our eventual death, sin most significantly alienates us from almighty God.

Eden was the sanctuary, the primeval temple of the covenant Lord, and Adam was a priest to worship, tend, and guard that sanctuary. Now Adam has sinned; he is shut out of the temple.

Sin excludes you from ever standing in the sight of God. It is impossible. You cannot worship, you cannot pray, you cannot draw near to God in your natural condition as a sinful son or daughter of Adam. Unless your status and nature as a sinner is removed and renovated all your most religious exercises are mere manifestations of rebellion.

So what will you do? You are shut out of Eden. You are excluded from any access whatever to God. You live under the standing condemnation of the covenant Lord. Death here and hereafter will be your lot. What remedy is there for you?

Well briefly as we close did you notice the naming of Eve in vs. 20 by Adam, and the action of God for Adam and in vs. 21?

What are we to make of them? Well, the name Adam gives his wife is significant. Eve means ‘living’. We might paraphrase Eve’s name as ‘life giver’.  Adam named her Eve because, we are told, “she would become the mother of all the living”.  Now, all Adam had to go on in drawing this conclusion was the promise of God hidden under his curses.

In other words, Adam was acting in faith that, somehow, from Eve the two great lines would descend between whom there would be enmity, and that, in time she would be the bearer of the Seed of promise. Adam has an eye on the coming Seed who will crush the serpent’s head when he names Eve. 

And how does God respond to the faith of this pair? He hides their nakedness. Most likely He kills an animal to make the coverings of skin. Their attempts at covering themselves were inadequate. Only God’s action in covering Adam’s shame and the sin that occasioned it will do.

In verse 20 and 21 we have the two great essentials of salvation; faith in the redeemer, and the means of redemption. Adam believed God’s promises and showed it by naming Eve. God covered Adam’s sin by killing an animal and making garments of skin. Interestingly, the only other time the word used for God’s clothing Adam and Eve here is in Leviticus 8:13, when Moses ordains Aaron and his sons to the Priesthood, and clothes them, that they may not be exposed in the sight of God. When God clothed Adam he was reinstating him to the priesthood. He was opening the door of access to his presence again, but this time by a different route. Not via the lost Sanctuary of Eden but by a sanctuary not made with hands, built by the Lord Jesus himself and accessed by His self-sacrifice alone. When God clothes our nakedness He makes us once more priests to enter into His presence and offer acceptable worship through the blood of Jesus Christ.

So, the way of salvation is two fold.

1. Believe in God appointed saviour, the seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and all your household.

2.  Receive from the hand of God alone the coverings you need to take away your shame and render you acceptable before God. That covering is the covering of sacrifice. That sacrifice was given in the death of Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Clothed with Christ you will become a royal priesthood and a holy nation.

So here is my question for you. It is very simple but it is desperately urgent that you answer it well; what will you do with your sin? Or to put it differently, what will you do with the One who has now come to deal with your sin, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Read through Genesis 3:14-24 and the judgments of God there, and see scattered through them all promise after promise that points you to the only source of rescue and deliverance, God’s Son our saviour, Christ the Lord. May the Lord Give you grace to leave your sin and shame and find in Jesus all the covering you need.

Amen