Slices
Prepare
How do you feel when you have to confront someone with the consequences of their negative actions, or when someone lets you down?
Bible passage
14 So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘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.’
16 To the woman he said,
‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour 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 fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from 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 for ever.’ 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.
Explore
God takes action, and says three things. To the serpent: you are cursed (vs 14,15). To the woman: you will have pain in childbirth (v 16). To the man: the ground is cursed (vs 17–19). In other words, all those good relationships in creation are now a whole lot more complicated. Working the ground will be difficult, and bringing new people into the world to create new relationships will be difficult.
Notice that God curses the serpent and the ground, but not Adam or Eve. There is some comfort in that, and also in God’s caring for them in the post-garden world (v 21). He gives them ‘garments of skin’ – so they will not enter the wider world naked or ashamed. He also stops them from obtaining immortality on this earth (v 24). Who, after all, wants to live with sin for ever?
Genesis 1–3 affirms two fundamental things. First – the world is good. Second – the world is broken. Jewish and Christian faith hold these two convictions in tension, and we won’t understand our world rightly without both of them. It’s not about being optimistic or pessimistic. It’s about being realistic – about both good and evil.
Respond
As you go through your day, look for signs of the world’s goodness and of the world’s brokenness. Give thanks for the goodness, and ask God to intervene in the brokenness.
Deeper Bible study
‘The whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth … even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.’1
Adam and Eve had been told by the serpent that they would be like God if they ate the fruit. That is, they could become more than they were; they could elevate themselves. God acknowledges that the humans have become like him in knowing good and evil (v 22) and thus he needs to prevent them eating from the tree of life. At the same time, he points out to the humans that they have lowered themselves in eating of the fruit, for they will die and become dust. Dust is, actually, what they were before God breathed life into them; the dust of the ground (v 19). To some extent they have reversed what they were. They have certainly made a move that removes them from the purpose they were given – to cultivate the garden – for they are driven out of the garden. So very much has been lost. I’m sure they had no idea of the consequences that their sin would have, not least that creation itself would be cursed. They simply looked at the immediate effect of eating the fruit: knowledge for themselves. We are not so different and if we could foresee the consequences of our sin, perhaps we would think twice sometimes.
Once they had sinned, they wanted to cover themselves, so they sewed fig leaves together (v 7). They still did not feel covered, however, because when they heard the sound of God in the garden, they hid themselves among the trees (v 8). It is God who covers them properly when he clothes them in animal skins (v 21). Is it significant that the only way to cover them after they had sinned was by the shedding of animal blood? Does this prefigure the sacrificial system and is this, ultimately, an adumbration of the cross?
If you feel guilty about forgiven sins, then meditate on the all-encompassing work of reconciliation that Christ accomplished on the cross. His grace was sufficient for your sins.2
1 Rom 8:22,23, NASB 2 Cf 2 Cor 12:9
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Genesis 18,19; Acts 7
Pray for Scripture Union
Rooted is an approach to youth ministry based on long-term relationships that enables young people to explore Christian faith at their own pace. Pray for the development of Rooted hubs in partnership with Eden bus project across Anfield, and for Rooted retreat days happening across schools in Blackpool and Stockport.
