Sermon Tone Analysis

*Grace Amidst Judgment ~~ Genesis 3:16-21*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church, November 25, 2007/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

 

Arthur W. Pink writes: ‘The third chapter in Genesis is one of the most important in all the Word of God … it is the "seed-plot of the Bible."

-          Here are the foundations upon which rest many of the cardinal doctrines of our faith.

-          Here we trace back to their source many of the rivers of divine truth.

-          Here commences the great drama which is being enacted on the stage of human history ...

-          Here we find the Divine explanation of the present fallen and ruined condition of our race.

-          Here we learn of the subtle devices of our enemy, the Devil.

-          Here we behold the utter powerlessness of man to walk in the path of righteousness when divine grace is withheld from him.

-          Here we discover the spiritual effects of sin—man seeking to flee from God.

-          Here we discern the attitude of God toward the guilty sinner.

-          Here we mark the universal tendency of human nature to cover its own moral shame by a device of man’s own handiwork.

-          Here we are taught of the gracious provision which God has made to meet our great need.

-          Here begins that marvelous stream of prophecy which runs all through the Holy Scriptures.

-          Here we learn that man cannot approach God except through a mediator.’[1]

/ /

Last week we saw in Genesis 3:15 what scholars call “first gospel”

[I]t is the first direct expression of the gospel.

It recognizes the essential conflict between Satan and the Lord and indicates that this conflict also will involve the people of God and the followers of Satan (cf.

John 8:44; Acts 13:10; I John 3:10).

The seed of the woman is a clear reference to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus (cf.

Rev. 12:1-5; Gal.

3:16, 19), who came “to destroy the works of the devil” (Heb.

2:14; I John 3:8).

The /protevangelium /prophesied that Christ would deliver a death blow to Satan, but in so doing would suffer death Himself.[2]

*Genesis 3:15 **And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”*

\\ Last week I mentioned some reasons why I believe Satan understood this prophecy, and also that Adam and Eve and their descendants understood this prophecy which becomes the expectation throughout Genesis.

It appears that this hope, this grace promised right in the heart of the curse on the serpent, this was passed on orally from the first humans and spread to the other ancient people of the world.

This is a fascinating study to trace:

* Similarities to Genesis 3 in the Babylonian Adapa legend.[3]

* The Gilgamesh Epic has a snake, man, plants, and the promise of life.[4]

* ‘The Egyptian Pyramid Texts (second half of third millennium) … enjoin the serpent to crawl on its belly (keep its face on the path).

This is in contrast to raising its head up to strike.

The serpent on its belly is nonthreatening, while the one reared up is protecting or attacking.

Treading on the serpent is used in these texts as a means of overcoming or defeating it.’[5]

* The Egyptians in fact portrayed snakes as having legs and being able to speak, which leads liberal commentators to argue that Moses simply borrowed the imagery of where he grew up.

Instead, it may me best to see such “parallels” as  Egyptian perversion of true history (not unlike 100-200 ancient flood stories with some similarities to Genesis, ANE similar legends of tower of Babel, fall, etc.).

Moses is providing by divine revelation the /truth/ of what happened and correcting the false ideas and distortions of ancient man

* Perhaps this same principle holds true in supposed ancient parallels to Genesis 3:15, such as the Indian Krishna who contends with the Evil One in the form of a serpent, or the Ahriman of Iran who in the form of a serpent brought of his fruit to mankind as created by their god.[6]

Some have suggested further examples of how the story of enmity with serpents (often defeated by heroes or gods as opposed to normal humans) is retold in star-figures by which early peoples identified the heavenly constellations and their mythologies:

* Hercules is portrayed as battling with the serpent who guarded an apple.

* The king of animals, Leo, is shown clawing the head of a great fleeing serpent.

* The Scorpion is illustrated as stinging the heel of a great fleeing serpent.

* Some think the constellation Virgo, with the spike of wheat in her hands, may preserve oral tradition of a promised seed of the woman from ancient times.

* The Scorpion is illustrated as stinging the heels of the great hero Ophiuchus.

* It is certainly not impossible that some of these or other representations from ancient myths were distorted remembrances of a great primeval prophecy.[7]

Whether this is the case or not, God through Moses here presents /what really happened – the true history and source of the epic spiritual struggle that only Christ adequately answers./

The great Puritan hymn-writer Isaac Watts may give the best summary of the biblical and Christian truth of what has happened up to this point in Genesis 3:

/ /

/Deceived by subtle snares of hell, Adam, our head, our father, fell;/

/When Satan, in the serpent hid, Proposed the fruit that God forbid./

/Death was the threat’ning: death began To take possession of the man/

/His unborn race received the wound, And heavy curses smote the ground./

/But Satan found a worse reward; Thus saith the vengeance of the Lord/

/“Let everlasting hatred be Betwixt the woman’s seed and thee./

/“The woman’s seed shall be my Son; He shall destroy what thou hast done;/

/Shall break thy head, and only feel Thy malice raging at his heel.”/

/He spake; and bid four thousand years Roll on; at length his Son appears;/

/Angels with joy descend to earth, And sing the young Redeemer’s birth./

/Lo, by the sons of hell he dies; But as he hung ’twixt earth and skies,/

/He gave their [devil] a fatal blow, And triumphed o’er the powers below./

Our study outline this morning will be simple – God’s Judgment and God’s Grace:

#.

God’s Judgment on humanity

#.

God’s Grace toward humanity

/I want you to see that in every part of God’s judgment, there is grace as well.

But first the bad news before the good news …/

* *

*I.

GOD’S JUDGMENT ON HUMANITY*

* *

*Genesis 3:16-17 **To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

Then to Adam 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 will eat of it All the days of your life.*

\\ \\

If you could summarize God’s judgment in one word it would be “pain” or “sorrow.”

Twice he uses that Hebrew word “pain” in verse 16 and for the man also in v. 17 “In *toil* [same Heb.

Word] you will eat of it All the days of your life.”

NIV has “painful toil” – KVJ uses the word “sorrow”

 

Both are appropriate, because the word can include emotional pain or sorrow, not merely physical pain.

Life will now be difficult, it will be filled with pain and sorrow and difficulty that did not exist before sin entered.

Verse 19 says this will continue till death, till man returns to the dust.

A life of pain, then death.

This is the result of their sin – this is God’s judgment.

Adam and Eve sought to pursue pleasure and pride, now they will have pain instead of paradise.

All of life is marked by this effect of sin, but in particular there are areas of pain where man and woman will uniquely and especially feel these effects.

For the woman, she will feel the effects in pregnancy and both will be affected in their marital life.

The man will feel sin’s effects especially in his work.

The areas where each find their highest fulfillment will not escape the results of sin.

Three areas:

1) Motherhood

2) Marriage

3) Work

 

*/1.SIN AFFECTS  MOTHERHOOD/*

 

Pregnancy is not a curse - conception, and childbearing and mothering actually could be and should be a joy.

In fact it says earlier that God /blessed/ Adam and Eve by saying “be fruitful and multiply” but now God says He will multiply her pain in this blessing and process.

Marriage relationships between husband and wife as the 2nd half of verse 16 discusses, and the work and toil of man as verses 17-19 discuss – these things are also called blessings and gifts of God in His Word.

But it is even in our greatest fulfillment and callings that sin will now be very present.

Humanity’s blessings will not escape the effects of sin, and in fact right in the midst of them sin will remind us of the fall’s effects.

Kent Hughes writes: ‘the woman’s punishment struck at the deepest root of her being as wife and mother, the man’s strikes at the innermost nerve of his life: his work, his activity, and provision for sustenance … Both of them would experience perpetual pain in the centers of their existence.’[8]

The labor of pregnancy and the labor of man’s work can be redeemed by God’s grace, but they would now be much more difficult and painful and sorrowful and stressful since we’re sinful.

Verse 16 says God would greatly multiply this pain or sorrow.

The KJV has literally “sorrow /and/ your conception” – most other translations and commentators take it as sorrow /in /conception, and many would expand the meaning to the whole process from conception to childbirth to be parallel with the next phrase “in pain you will bring forth children.”

Without modern medicine, birth pains are described as one of the worst possible agonies for humans, a frequent biblical analogy.

Isaiah 13:8 (NASB95) \\ 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; *They will writhe like a woman in labor*, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame.

\\ \\

Isaiah 21:3 (NASB95) \\ 3 For this reason my loins are full of anguish; *Pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor.