Jump Start # 572

Genesis 3:19 “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

We continue our look at Adam and Eve and the Garden this week. There are many valuable lessons found in this chapter.

Our verse today is taken from a series of punishments and curses that God pronounced because of Adam and Eve’s choice to disobey. God was angry. He did not look the other way. He did not say, “No big deal. At least no one was hurt.” In a pickup game of basketball, there is an expression, “No blood, no foul,” which means every little bump or push is not considered a foul. It’s only the blatant stuff. If there is blood, then we’ll call a foul. That’s how some see sin. As long as no one gets hurt, it’s no big deal. Consenting adults, things done behind closed doors, things done at home—no one got hurt, why are people so upset? No one got hurt when Adam and Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit. It was wrong. Something can be wrong without pain, blood, or people becoming physically injured. God was angry. They disobeyed Him. They chose Satan. They rejected God. That’s at the heart of sin.

There is a series of curses.

• First, to the serpent—he’ll crawl on his belly.

• Next to Satan—the seed of woman will crush the head of the serpent. That seed is Jesus. He was born of a woman. The action of crushing the serpent will bruise the heel of Jesus. This is the first glimpse of the coming Jesus. This is the first messianic prophecy. Satan’s name and Jesus’ name are not used but they are understood. This is God’s first action to save man. If a person stomped on the head of a snake, the snake would die. If a person did it hard enough, he might hurt his heel. The death blow to Satan, that also bruised the heel of Jesus, was the death and resurrection of Christ. Jesus died. His death didn’t finish Him off. He arose from the grave. Satan’s greatest tool is death. It is what man fears the most. When a person dies, they are dead. There are just a handful of people that were resurrected in the Bible, but even those people died again. Jesus is the first to die and be raised to never die again. There is nothing Satan can do about that. He has no weapons in his arsenal to combat that. The resurrection of Jesus was the crushing of Satan.

• To Eve—pain in childbirth and a position of being ruled by the husband

• To Adam– the ground will be cursed with weeds so man has to toil harder, and death.

Some tend to think that Adam and Eve did not die when they disobeyed God. They did. Not physically, but spiritually. That is illustrated by the fact that God drove them out of the garden. It is in the garden that God walked (v. 8). The relationship was broken and spiritual death is a separation from God.  Adam and Eve were separated from the presence of God.

Because of these curses, death has come upon all man. In Corinthians we are told that death entered through one man—Adam. Everyone we know sooner or later dies. When you trace your family history, one fact is true, they are born and then they die. This has led many to conclude that we inherited Adam’s sin, like a gene we inherit from our parents. Inherited sin is a major part of the religious fabric of many faiths. You read it in books. You see it discussed in commentaries. The thought is so prevalent, that most don’t think anything about it. The problem is, this is not so.

We face the consequences of Adam’s sin, but not his sin. There is a difference. Sin is disobedience. Sin is breaking God’s law. Consequences can fall upon innocent people because of the sin of others. For instance, a crack addicted teen can give birth to a baby that has multiple health problems. Is the baby guilty of drug abuse? No. The mother is. The baby suffers from the consequences. A family driving home can be hit by a drunk driver. The family can all be killed. The drunk lives. They died not by any thing they did wrong. It was the consequence of the drunk.

Adam opened a door that was closed. That door was disobedience to God. Since that door was opened, mankind has continually walked through that door. We are born pure and innocent. Sin is not something you inherit like red hair, or freckles, or height. Sin is something you choose to do. A person chooses to take that which is forbidden, when that happens, they have sinned. James 1 illustrates that process. Sin begins in the heart as lust or desire. That desire leads to choosing wrong. That is sin. An act of disobedience. Sin causes us to die spiritually. Death follows sin.

Babies do not sin. Yet babies die.  They die because death is a consequence of Adam’s sin. Women have pain giving birth. That is a consequence of the sin. The ground has weeds. It’s hard to grow a beautiful yard. It’s easy to have weeds—do nothing. Weeds just come. When it’s too wet, weeds grow. When it’s too hot and dry, weeds grow. They always grow. Why? Consequence of sin. There is a difference between the action of disobedience and a consequence.

Hebrews 9:27 says that it is appointed unto man to die once and after this comes the judgment. Why is it appointed that we die? Because man disobeyed God. Man was driven from the garden. Access to the tree of life was removed. Every day we see the consequences of that first sin. Every sin has consequences. Every sin hurts. Every sin affects relationships, especially our relationship with God.

Babies in the N.T. were not baptized. There was no need to baptize them. They had not sinned. They were not born sinful. They were not separated from God. Baptism is for those who through faith have repented of their sins and come to Christ for forgiveness. What happens when a baby dies? The soul of that child goes to God in Heaven. The doctrines of infant baptism, limbo (the place where unbaptized babies go at death) and inherited sin are not from the Bible. They come from misunderstandings about what the Bible teaches.

Inherited sin is a twisted theology that has messed the thinking of generations of people. Understanding what sin is and how one sins and the differences between sin and the consequences of sin are huge.

God wants us to trust Him, follow Him and obey Him

Roger