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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
So the Lord 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. 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."
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 or your husband and he will rule over you."
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. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. 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 dust you will return"
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
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.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
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.
Genesis 3:14-24
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
The disobedience in Eden had been discovered and God fully knew His commands were disregarded after the serpent tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a fruit that Adam ate as well as the curse of sinfulness entered God’s perfect creation forever.
If you thought God was happy about that, think again, for in today’s scripture passage from Genesis, chapter 3, we learn that He despises anyone who disregards His commands outright or leads someone to disregard those commands. This is evident in His words following the failure of His created man and woman, enticed into failure by the serpent.
First, we find God cursing the serpent, condemning him to crawl on his belly and eat dust forever.
So the Lord 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. 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."
Ever since then up to present times, we see where snakes do just as God said, slithering on their bellies in the dust and in a place where their heads could be crushed by the heel. In the end translation, the serpent tempted man to fail and would thus face death at the hands of mankind forever.
After the serpent, we find that God’s judgment was directed toward Eve. We should notice here that it wasn’t just her that would suffer the penalty for her iniquity but all women who would follow.
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 or your husband and he will rule over you."
Eve would soon become the first mother “of all the living” and while delivering her children, she experienced increased pain in her child bearing and birth, a happening that has endured ever since. So the next time a woman deals with the challenges of pregnancy and the agony of pushing out their baby from the womb, they can know that it all happened because of Eve and her transgressions in Eden.
Finally, there was Adam and as we see, the Lord has penalties for him as well.
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. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. 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 dust you will return"
Here, we read where the ground became cursed because of the first man, who would then be forced to eat from it “all the days” of his life. Further, God promised that “thorns and thistles” would emerge to scratch and entangle man as he walked the earth. Eventually, the scriptures make it clear that Adam would one day return to the very ground God cursed but he would not do so while still in Eden for God banished him from there forever and then set “cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life”.
So what are our takeaways from these reprimands and their associated disciplinary actions?
Here are three main points to ponder:
1. Anything good established by God can be ruined by a simple act of disobeying His commands.
Eden was a perfect paradise and neither Adam nor Eve could have asked for a better place to live. And yet, all it took was to eat fruit forbidden by God to change everything for the bad and to do so forever.
2. Anyone can be tempted to disobey God’s commands.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that what happened to this first couple couldn’t happen to you as well. Satan is skilled in deceiving people and plays off their desires. We can never let our guard down, not for a moment.
3. Disobedience to God leads to His judgment and consequence.
God will never allow sin to go unaddressed. Choose to violate Him and His expectations and you can be sure that retribution will follow. Only a fool would invite God’s wrath to be unleashed upon them.
In this third chapter of Genesis, we see how Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world and sadly, we’re afflicted now and will be until death. What happens after that depends on whether we know and trust God’s only Son Jesus, who paid the price for the sins of the world by way of His crucifixion on the cross.
If we believe in Him as Savior, our sins will be no more at death. We will be washed white as snow by the precious blood of the Lamb Jesus who came to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
Conversely, if you don’t know Jesus, your sins will condemn you to God’s judgment and you’ll never escape damnation.
If Jesus returns before you die at the time of Rapture, your fate will be established then and there. It will be too late. If you happen to die suddenly, no matter the means, and you don’t believe in Jesus, Hell will be your eternal home.
With all this, the only way to guarantee eternal life is to affirm in your heart that Jesus, and Him alone, is your Lord and Savior. If you haven’t yet done this, I urge you to not delay one more moment. Believe in Jesus and gain the hope of Heaven, now and forever more.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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