Adam and Eve have admitted to eating the fruit when God asked about it, but Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. It's interesting that the Lord doesn't ask the serpent anything. We know the serpent can talk, or at least it could while Satan was using it, but the Lord requires no explanation from it and the Bible doesn't tell us why. But the Bible indicates that the serpent may have been willing to be used by Satan. The reason I think that is because the Lord hands down a sentence on the serpent.
"So the Lord said to the serpent, '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." (Genesis 3:14a) If you go online and Google "did snakes have legs" you will find a lot of information that proves they once did. I'm not talking about articles of a religious nature; you will find plenty of solely scientific articles on the subject. If Moses is the author of Genesis as has always been supposed, then he lived a long time after snakes stopped having legs. Moses was no scientist. He was no wild animal expert. How would he have known snakes ever had legs in the first place if that information hadn't been passed down through the generations? I bet at one time there were people who scoffed at the idea of serpents once having legs, but science now backs up what Moses tells us in Genesis.
Next the Lord makes a prophetic statement, and in this statement He is not speaking so much to the animal serpent but to the one who used the serpent for his evil purposes: Satan. "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." (Genesis 3:15) The Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is the offspring of the woman. The Biblical genealogy of Jesus clearly shows He is a direct descendant of Adam and Eve through their son Seth. From this moment in the garden, Satan knows a Redeemer is coming. He is going to do many things to try and keep the Redeemer from coming, but he won't be successful. Finally, as Jesus hangs condemned to death on the cross, Satan will think he has won. He will "strike His heel". But Christ will have the last word, rising in victory from the grave, triumphing over sin and death on our behalf. Christ started bruising the head of Satan on the day He came out of the tomb, and someday He will condemn Satan to eternal torment where he will never again tempt another human being.
"To the woman He said, 'I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16) The word translated as desire is the Hebrew "tshuqah" which can mean to either have a desire for something or a desire to rule over something. Many scholars believe the Lord is telling Eve she is going to desire to rule over Adam. She has already displayed that desire by talking him into joining with her in eating the fruit. As a woman and as a wife, I get it. I'd like to be able to tell my husband how to conduct every aspect of his life. Some of you ladies who are wives probably know what I mean. We try to tell our husbands how to take care of their health and we give them career advice and we sometimes have to give them advice about people because God has given women a special gift of discernment, or at least I think He has. "Women's intuition" seems to be a real thing. As the sex who is generally physically smaller and weaker, women need the ability to judge people's character and people's intentions pretty quickly. There's nothing wrong with a wife discussing her opinions with her husband in a respectful way. Very often my husband takes my ideas to heart and agrees with me. Our husbands love us and want to make us happy, but that gives us a great deal of power and we need to make certain that any opinions and ideas we discuss with our husbands are in line with the word of God. Our husbands may give in to things that are wrong simply because they want to please us. Eve's words to her husband weren't in line with the word of God but, because Adam loved her and wanted to make her happy, he gave in.
Eve wants to be the boss, so in order to develop godly character in her the Lord teaches her to obey Him by telling her she has to let Adam be the head of the home. If she can't respect a person who is in her own house, how can she respect the God who cannot be seen? Adam doesn't want to be the boss, so in order to develop godly character in him the Lord tells him he has to set the spiritual example for his household. Men want peace and quiet in the home, so even if they aren't on board with whatever their wives want to do, it's easier just to agree. Plus I think there are some men (like Adam) who prefer having someone else make the decisions. It makes life simpler. They can relax when they're not at work because someone else is taking care of making decisions for the household. But the Lord doesn't want anyone to become spiritually lazy, and the situation between Adam and Eve made both of them lazy. By being the more dominant personality, Eve didn't ask her husband what he thought the Lord would want her to do and she didn't have to spend any time thinking about what Adam said; she just did as she pleased. Adam didn't have to think about making a decision; he allowed Eve to make the decision for him. The Lord is asking each of them to go against what they naturally want to do. Spiritual development usually includes the Lord asking us to do things that go against what we want (in our flesh) to naturally do. If He just allowed us to go our own way and do our own thing, He wouldn't be a very good Father. Like any parent, the Lord wants us to grow and mature. If we are never asked to step up and do things that call for strength, we are going to be puny little weaklings.
Join us tomorrow as we study part two where the Lord hands down a sentence on Adam.
No comments:
Post a Comment