The Curse on the Man
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 27 January 2019
Let us study again Genesis 3, related to the origin and impact of sin. We are studying tonight verses 17 to 19, the divine curse on the man. Our modern civilization has had a staggering scientific advancement in our life time. Science has achieved things that we never ever could have imagined. We have seen man figure out ways to unlock the genetic code to study DNA and to repair DNA.
We have seen man effectively work in cloning animals. What all you can do on my cell phone is still a wonder to me. Chemicals have been used in every imaginable way to provide a level of life both in terms of comfort as well as medical treatment. All of that simply says to us that we have made staggering progress in our grasp of the elements of the physical world.
Equally amazing to me is the absence of any understanding of spiritual reality. Even though there has been all of this amazing physical advancement, there has been virtually zero spiritual advancement. And while we have made these wondrous discoveries and come to astonishing capabilities with the physical world, the spiritual world is completely unknown to modern man.
And with all of these advancements humanity cannot resolve any of the issues of the human heart. He does not understand why he is the way he is and therefore he cannot explain nor can he remedy his problems. Things in the hearts of people are the way they are not because of evolution, or bad education, or bad psychology or lack of self-esteem. Man is getting worse spiritually because of sin.
And man will never be able to solve his moral problems, his spiritual problems, the problem of evil, the problem of crime, the problem of dissatisfaction, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, shattered relationships, etc., etc., without a proper understanding of the problem. Unless you see things the way they really are, then you cannot solve or cure this big overall problem.
There is only one way that mankind can turn if they want to understand the supernatural. And to understand the spiritual the people have to turn to the Word of God. And yet they are not interested in doing that. They do not want the Bible in the schools. They don't want any information from Christians. People who believe in the Bible threaten them and they all hate God unless He opens up their hearts.
Genesis 3 is where God explains it. Starting in Genesis 1:26 God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness and then let them rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. 27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Verse 28, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth.' 29 And God said, 'I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be fruit for you. 30 And to every living thing of the earth, I have given every green plant for food and it was so.”
Verse 31, “And God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good." There was no evil in the world. In Genesis 2:7 the story goes on, explaining how God actually made man. "The Lord God formed man from dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, there He placed the man whom He had formed.
There was a probation test in perfection in this paradise called Eden. God put man on probation to see if he would be obedient by giving him only one prohibition, one thing he could not do. Verse 16-17, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
And then in Genesis 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” And in that act of disobedience, sin entered the world till the whole human race became evil.
When Adam and Eve ate and disobeyed God, the principle of death entered into the world. God had said, "In the day you eat you shall die." They didn't drop dead on the spot but the principle of death began to operate. And so the world is dying. The stellar bodies are dying. Everything on the earth is dying. The earth itself is dying. And man is in the cycle of death.
That is the consequence of sin. Man is now a dying sinner. He is perverted, he is wretched, he is evil and that's why he behaves the way he behaves. And he cannot remedy that on his own, nor can society remedy it for him. But in addition to that, you have the specific curses of God. In verses 14 and 15 God cursed Satan and the serpent. Then in verse 16 we saw that God cursed the woman.
So, a woman feels the curse in the very realm in which she exists in that of bearing children and in the relationship with her husband. She desires to have her own way and have her own will and dominate, but he controls her. Every woman who struggles with the pain of childbirth, with the struggles of raising children, the experience of conflict with her husband is reminded of the consequences of sin.
Verse 17-19, “Then to the man He said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you saying you shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, 18 both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face; you shall eat bread till you return to the ground because from it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return.'"
Man was not deceived like the woman, he chose to disobey God willfully, he chose to do what his wife wanted him to do. He chose his wife over the Word of God. And he, not the woman, as the head of the human race was held responsible for the sin. That's why in Adam we die, rather than in Eve. He is the head of that union, he is therefore the head of the race. The whole human race became sinful.
But the curse is something beyond just decay and disease, death and destruction. The curse has to do with his world. His world is the field, the work place, and he's cursed in the work place. Eve struggles with the reality of sin in the home. Adam struggles with the reality of sin when he goes out to plow the field. All of the natural effects of sin are there but these are the special added effects.
Let us study these three verses, Genesis 3:17, 18 and 19 and think about 1.the cause of this curse, 2.the curse itself and 3.the consequence of it. Verse 17a: "To Adam He said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat from it’, cursed...'" is the next word. So here is the reason for the curse.
God gives us a simple, straightforward and complete statement of Adam's motivation. Now we know from 1 Timothy 2 that he was not deceived. What it tells us here in verse 17 is what it doesn't tell us back in verse 6, the reason that he did this was because he listened to the voice of his wife, rather than the voice of God. He followed her rather than following God.
Women have always had some power over men. I think it's good to meet the desires of your wife, but not when she is asking you to disobey God’s orders. Eve knew what God had said and Adam knew what God had said. But she wanted him to eat. She was under the delusion that she would now know good and evil; that she would be like God. This was an act of self-exaltation.
This is the first time man is named Adam. And God continues in verse 17, “You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” There was no confusion on the part of Adam, he did what his wife told him to do. It was a premeditated act of rebellion against God.
Any violation of God's law is a damning violation. The apostle Paul said, "Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." And Adam deserves to die. He did not instantly die physically but spiritually. But the seeds of physical death began to operate and decay immediately entered in and death would come eventually. But actually he deserved to die on the spot, and so did Eve.
Why didn't God kill them? Because He's a God of grace and mercy. Liberals and critics of the Bible say, "Oh, the God of the Old Testament is a terrible God." He would wipe out the Canaanites. Now what kind of God is going to open the ground and swallow people? What kind of a God is going to tell the Israelites to massacre people and kill people? What kind of God is this?
But that's not the right question. The question should be what kind of a God allows anybody to live? The killings are the exception. And this is a matter that is central to Scripture, that God is a God of mercy. You see it in the case of Adam and Eve. When we study verses 20 to 24, we're going to learn that redemption is actually promised right then and there immediately after the curse.
The question should be: why does God let so many people live who should be dead? "The wages of sin is death." And the critics say, in 2 Samuel 6 there's Uzzah as the ark is being transported, it starts to fall off the cart, and the man holds his hand against the ark to try to stop it from falling off the cart. And immediately God kills him. People say, "What kind of a God would do that?"
Let us look at an illustration in Luke 13:1, “There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” Some of the Jews up in Galilee had come down to Judea to Jerusalem to the temple to offer sacrifices. Then Pilate comes in and executes them. How can God let the Romans come in and slaughter them?
In verse 2, "And Jesus answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” The truth is that they were wretched and terrible sinners and God was so offended by their sin that their sacrifices were mere hypocrisy and He just sent the troops of Pilate in there to massacre them.
Verse 3, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” They're saying, were these worse sinners than everybody else? And Jesus says, "No they weren't, and if you don't repent, the same thing is going to happen to you." The question is not why do people die, the question is why does anybody live? God shows us many illustrations of what we deserve.
Now notice that the curse isn't just on the man only, but it's on the sphere of the man, as in the case of the woman. Man, the king of the earth, becomes subordinate to dirt. The ground feels nothing, "cursed is the ground." But the man feels it. The word "ground" is ‘adamah’. The man is Adam, the man comes from the ground, dust to dust. Everything we eat comes out of the ground, right?
The man suffers the effect of the curse in the field, the place of his life and labor. The man engages in the battle for the food and support of the family. Man's life is not going to be easy. Not only is he personally sinful, depraved and headed toward death, but he's going to find that the ground is not going to just submit to him. Life becomes for him hard work. 2 Tess 3:10, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
A cursed ground may consist of the lack of water, problems with the soil, problems with weeds, problems with the weather, problems with the destructive animals, problems with destructive insects. Those are all the problems that plague the ground. The earth will yield enough but in order for that to happen, it's going to take a tremendous effort for man to achieve that.
Someday the world is going to see an earth where the curse has been removed. Starting at Isaiah 30:13, which describes the coming Millennial Kingdom, it says, "Then the Lord will give you the choicest gifts of heaven, the choicest fruits of the sun, the finest produce of the mountains with the best gifts of the earth.” Isaiah 32:15 talks about the wilderness becoming a fruitful field and be like a forest.
So, here is a glimpse of what the earth is going to be like after the curse is removed. That is the way the world will be after Christ takes the curse off. It will be something like it was in the Garden of Eden. But until that time, let's go back to Genesis 3, this ground is cursed and man in order to get out of it what he needs to support his life and feed his family is going to have to toil.
Ecclesiastes 3:13, "Every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor, it's a gift of God." We need to keep busy or we will get into things we shouldn't get into. The saying that "Idle hands are the devil's plaything" is very real. And the ultimate penalty on man’s sin is death. But man was given life. But in that life he would never be able to forget the impact of sin. Do the people in this world understand this principle? Let's pray for them.