Sins Consequences
Genesis 3:8-4:261, 2
February 12, 2006


Today’s message is from Genesis 3:8 through 4:26. It’s about the consequences of sin, but also about God’s grace. Again, as I did last week, I’m not going to read the whole passage before I give the message; it’s long.  But I will read it section by section as I talk about it. Remember as I read it though, that it’s the word of God. It was breathed by God. And there’s very good reason to believe that, in the original Hebrew, God gave it to Moses, not idea by idea or thought by thought, not even word by word, but letter by letter. Remember that we are reading the word of God.

(Incidentally, for anyone who wants to read the text of this message on the Living Hope Fellowship website, I’ve also included the text of today’s passage, Genesis 3:8-4:26, at the end of the message. It’s from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is the translation I’ve been using. So, you can scroll to the end of the message and read the passage before you read the message.)

And also, as always, I encourage you to read your Bibles every day. We need the word of God to sustain our lives. I say this every week to remind you, because it’s so easy to forget when you’re distracted by all the busy things of this life. So read your Bible every day and ask God to write his words in your heart. (And that’s something you have to make an effort toward also. You have to work at remembering what you have read.)

[Prayer]

Last week I talked about God’s creation of man. The Lord God created the first man in his own image and placed him in a garden that he had specially created for him. He gave him complete freedom except for one restriction. The Lord God commanded him not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which he had placed in the midst of the garden. He told the man that on the day he ate of it he would certainly die. (He had also placed the tree of life in the midst of the garden, but had given no command concerning it.)

After the Lord God created the man, he declared that it was not good for the man to be alone and made a helper that was like the man. But, before the Lord God made the helper, he brought each of the birds and animals to the man to see what he would name them. The man named all the birds and the animals; but he did not find a helper that was like him.

Then the Lord God took one of the man’s ribs and made a helper that was like the man. The man said, “This one, at last, is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man.”  For this reason, the word of God says, a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.  The man and his wife were both naked, yet felt no shame. Do you remember that last week I told you that nakedness is frequently used in the Bible to represent sin? At this point the man and his wife were both naked, yet felt no shame. Sin had not yet come into the world.

Well, the serpent (who, according to Revelation 7:9, is the Devil or Satan) tempted the woman to disobey God and eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which he had commanded them not to eat. The serpent said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden?’” I believe the emphasis was on really: “Did God really say…?” The subtle implication was that God was acting selfishly and withholding something good from them. When you doubt God’s love, you no longer trust his motives. The serpent told the woman that she would not certainly die, but become like God, knowing good and evil. She saw the fruit looked good, was good for food and desirable for obtaining wisdom. She ate some and gave some to her husband to eat. Do you think they became like God? The serpent is a liar –a deceiver and a murderer. The man and his wife realized they were naked and sewed fig leaves together to make loincloths for themselves.

Well, that was the first result of sin. They thought there was something wrong with being naked. All the animals the Lord God had brought to the man were naked. Before they had eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had no idea there was anything wrong with being naked. In fact there was nothing wrong with it. They may not have even known what clothes were!

Well, that brings us up to today’s passage. Let’s look at chapter 3, verses 8 through 13. Listen while I read them:

8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10And he said, “I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
11Then He asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I had commanded you not to eat from?”
12Then the man replied, “The woman You gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”
13So the Lord God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?”
And the woman said, “It was the serpent. He deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:8-13)

The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden and hid from him. When the Lord God called out to the man, “Where are you?” the man told him that he hid because he was naked and he was afraid. Just look at what had happened! They were afraid of the Lord God who had made them. The Lord God had brought each of the animals he had created to the man to see what he would call them. The man neither ran away nor did he hide. He was not afraid of God. He had an open relationship with God. But after his disobedience, he was afraid and he hid.

The Lord God said to the man, “Who told you that you were naked?  Did you eat from the tree that I had commanded you not to eat from?” “Who told you that you were naked?” You see, the man shouldn’t have even realized that he was naked. It was because he had disobeyed God and eaten some of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And did you notice that the Lord God had been speaking to the man up to this point. It was the man who had knowingly disobeyed God. It was the woman who was deceived. The man was not deceived. (That’s what the apostle Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit, says in 1 Timothy 2:14.)   The man knew that on the day that he ate the fruit, he would certainly die. I believe that that the Lord God was holding him responsible for the woman’s sin also. After all, he was right there with the woman while the serpent was speaking to her and did nothing to stop her. The woman ate the fruit and gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. (Gen. 3:6b)

Now look at what the man said to the Lord God about his wife, the woman the Lord God had made out of part of the man’s own body: “The woman You gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Just like a man, isn’t it? “It’s my wife’s fault that I ate the fruit (even though I knew better).” This is the result of sin. And more than that, it was “the woman that You gave me…” The man blamed the woman and he blamed the Lord God for giving him the woman! Then the Lord God turned to the woman.

The Lord God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?” You know what she said? “It was the serpent. He deceived me, and I ate.” It was everyone else’s fault but theirs!

Now let’s look at what the Lord God said. This is from verses 14 through 17:

14Then the Lord God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this,
you are cursed more than any livestock
and more than any wild animal.
You will move on your belly
and eat dust all the days of your life.

15I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

16He said to the woman:

I will intensify your labor pains;
you will bear children in anguish.
Your desire will be for your husband,
yet he will dominate you. (Gen. 3:14-16)
First the Lord God spoke to the serpent. He told him that he would be cursed more any livestock or wild animal, and that he would move on his belly and eat dust all the days of his life. This is the first time God cursed anything in his creation. Sin brings a curse. In verse 15 the Lord God told the serpent that he would put hostility between him and the woman and between his seed and the woman’s seed. Sin brings hostility and contention. (By the way, does anyone know what sin is –what the Biblical definition of sin is? … 1 John 3:4 says, “Sin is the breaking of law.” That’s the Biblical definition of sin. What law are we talking about? It’s God’s law. Sin is disobeying God. When the man and the woman disobeyed God, they sinned.)

The Lord God told the serpent, “I will put hostility between your seed and her seed.” Do you know what seed means in this verse? It means descendant. The Lord God told the serpent that he was going to put hostility between the serpent’s descendant and the woman’s descendant. The word descendant is singular, meaning one descendant. (Seed can refer to a single seed or a bucketful of seeds, but descendant is singular.) The serpent actually has many descendants. Jesus said to the Pharisees who were challenging him, “You are of your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” That’s from John 8:44. I quoted it last week. The woman, of course, has many descendants too. All of us are her descendants. But the woman’s descendant God is referring to is one descendant. The serpent will strike the heal of that descendant. But that descendant of the woman will strike the serpent’s head. Who is that descendant? That descendent is Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ struck the head of the serpent when he prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done,” and went to the cross. Do you remember that scene in the Passion of the Christ movie? After Jesus prayed, it showed him grinding the serpents head under his heal!

Now look at verse 16. In verse 16 the Lord God told the woman that he would greatly increase her labor pains. That’s something I don’t know about first hand, but I’m told by everyone (everyone but my wife, that is) that it’s pretty painful.

But the Lord God also said to the woman, “Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will dominate you.” This is the situation after sin had come into the world. The word translated desire in this verse –“Your desire will be for your husband” –only occurs in two other places in the Old Testament. One is in Song of Songs 7:10. Song of Songs is a love song. In Song of Songs 7:10, the woman is saying, “I belong to my love and his desire is for me.” That’s one of the two other places the word translated desire occurs. The other place is Genesis 4:6, which I’ll get to in a few minutes, so keep it in mind.

Now let’s look at verses 17 through 19. This is what the Lord God had to say to the man –to Adam. Follow along as I read the passage:

17And He said to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of
painful labor all the days of your life.
18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust.” (Gen. 3:17-19)

The first thing the Lord God said was, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree…” Now the fact that the Lord God said “Because you listened to your wife” doesn’t mean that you should never listen to your wife.  It was because Adam listened to his wife when she told to disobey the Lord God –when she told him to eat from the tree that the Lord God had commanded him not to eat from. The result was that he would have to work hard just to feed his family. The Lord God cursed the ground. Up until this point, the ground simply produced all that they needed for food. They only had to pick it from the trees. They didn’t have to store it up or process it – just pick it and eat it. Listen to this again:

The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of
painful labor all the days of your life.
18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust.”

After eating bread by the sweat of his brow, Adam would finally die and his body would return to the ground from which he was taken. All these things are the consequences of sin. They are God’s consequences for sin.

Now let’s look at verses 20 through 24. I’ll read them:

20Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. 21The Lord God made clothing out of skins for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.
22The Lord God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” 23So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove man out, and east of the garden of Eden He stationed cherubim with a flaming, whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen. 3:20-24)

Adam named his wife Eve. She is “the mother of all living”. The Lord God also did something to provide protection for Adam and Eve. He made clothing out of skins for them. A lot of commentators like to point out that this would have required the sacrifice of animals – the shedding of blood –just as Jesus shed his blood on the cross for us. In spite of the curse, the Lord God was taking care of them.

Then the Lord God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and placed cherubim to guard it so that they wouldn’t be able to eat from the tree of life and become like God, living forever.

Now before we go on to chapter 4, I want to make a few comments. I want you to know that all the things that the Lord God decreed for Adam and Eve were not to give them what they deserved, but to save them from what they deserved. These things were not meant for vengeance, but for salvation!  Adam and Eve were now alienated from God. The purpose of all this was for them to seek God and to come back to him.

When The Lord God drove them from the garden, it was to save their lives. Think what would have happened if they had eaten from the tree of life. Do you think they would have become like God? They would have become like the Devil. The Lord God would have been forced to destroy them.

But, you know, we will become like God through faith in Jesus. What the first man and the first woman tried to steal, God has given as a gift to those who trust him (and I should emphasize that this is not for everyone, but only those who trust him). This gift comes through the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross for us. The apostle John says in 1 John, “Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed.  We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is.  And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2, 3) We will have bodies like his body, too, immortal and imperishable.

Now let’s go on to chapter 4. Let’s look at verse 1 through 7. I’ll read them:

1Adam knew his wife Eve intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” 2Then she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of a flock, but Cain cultivated the land. 3In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. 4And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast.
6Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? 7If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:1-7)

This is more of the consequences of sin. Sin breeds more sin. Cain and Abel were born to Adam and Eve.

Abel became a shepherd while Cain became a farmer. At some point they both made a sacrificial offering to the Lord. Cain presented some of the produce of the land while Abel offered some of the animals from the flock. The word of God says that the Lord had regarded (accepted) Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s.  It doesn’t say why, but I suspect that it had to do with their attitudes. It says that Abel presented some of the firstborn and the fat portions –in other words, the best he had, while Cain simply made an offering. Abel really wanted to please the Lord. Maybe Cain’s attitude was like my attitude when I pay my taxes.  I just do it because I have to.

Anyway, Cain was furious when his offering wasn’t accepted, so the Lord spoke to him: “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Do you remember when the Lord told Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will dominate you,” and I said that there were only two other place in the Old Testament where the Hebrew word translated desire occurs? “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you,” is the third place. “Its desire is for you.” “Your desire will be for your husband.” It makes the statement “your desire will be for your husband sound kind of negative, doesn’t it?

Now let’s look at verses 8 through 16. I’ll read them:

8Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”
10Then He said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground! 11So now you are cursed with alienation from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. 12If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
13But Cain answered the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14Since You are banishing me today from the soil, and I must hide myself from Your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, whoever finds me will kill me.”
15Then the Lord replied to him, “In that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” And He placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him. 16Then Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Cain was jealous of his brother Abel. The Lord had told him that all he had to do was to do what was right and he would be accepted. I’m sure Cain knew what that was, but he chose another solution. Rather than to listen to the Lord God, he chose to murder his brother – another consequence of sin. Have you ever been in a situation where you have had to prepare something for someone –maybe the teacher when you were in school, or maybe for your boss – and you knew that it was not your best effort? Were you angry when you were rebuked or maybe someone else got a better grade? Did you then try to argue in your mind why what you did should have been acceptable (even though you had some questions about it while you were doing it)? Or were you ever in the situation where you felt someone was making trouble for you –maybe you were jealous – you felt that the solution to your problem was for that person to just, somehow, disappear from the scene. That’s how Cain felt. Sin was crouching at his door and he didn’t master it. He tried to solve his problem by murdering his brother.

But even when the Lord banished him from the soil, he put his mark of protection on Cain. He said that if anyone killed Cain, he would suffer vengeance seven time over. Then Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

I’m not going to read the rest of chapter 4. It says that Cain built a city, that he had descendants and that his descendants made musical instruments and various kinds of tools.

I’m not going to read the rest of chapter 4, but I am going to comment on a couple passages. Verse 24 is what Lamech, one of Cain’s descendants said to his two wives after had he had killed a boy who had attacked him. Here’s what he said: “If Cain is to be avenged seven times over, then for Lamech it will be seventy-seven times!” In Matthew 18:22, 23, Peter asked Jesus if he should forgive a man who had sinned against him as many as seven times?” Jesus said, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Lamech, Cain’s descendant, said that he would avenge himself seventy-seven times. But Jesus tell us to forgive seventy-seven times.

The other verses I’m going to comment on are verses 25 and 26. Here’s what they say:

25Adam knew his wife intimately again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” 26A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord. (Gen. 4:25, 26)

The word of God says that at that time people began to call on the name of the Lord. People were now beginning to seek God. We are all descendants of Seth, incidentally, because everyone else was killed in the flood.

We’ll continue next week, the Lord willing. But I want to say that, from the time of Adam’s sin to the time of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, all of history has been for our salvation.

And now,

The Lord bless you and protect you;
the Lord make His face shine on you,
and be gracious to you;
the Lord look with favor on you
and give you peace.

[Prayer]



END NOTES
1 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible ®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible ®, Holman CSB ® and HCSB ® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.


2 The text for today’s message is reproduced below.

Sin’s Consequences
8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10And he said, “I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
11Then He asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I had commanded you not to eat from?”
12Then the man replied, “The woman You gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”
13So the Lord God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?”
And the woman said, “It was the serpent. He deceived me, and I ate.”
14Then the Lord God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this,
you are cursed more than any livestock
and more than any wild animal.
You will move on your belly
and eat dust all the days of your life.

15I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

16He said to the woman:

I will intensify your labor pains;
you will bear children in anguish.
Your desire will be for your husband,
yet he will dominate you.

17And He said to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of
painful labor all the days of your life.
18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust.”

20Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. 21The Lord God made clothing out of skins for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.
22The Lord God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” 23So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove man out, and east of the garden of Eden He stationed cherubim with a flaming, whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.


Chapter 4

Cain Murders Abel
1Adam knew his wife Eve intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” 2Then she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of a flock, but Cain cultivated the land. 3In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. 4And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast.
6Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? 7If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
8Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”
10Then He said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground! 11So now you are cursed with alienation from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. 12If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
13But Cain answered the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14Since You are banishing me today from the soil, and I must hide myself from Your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, whoever finds me will kill me.”
15Then the Lord replied to him, “In that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” And He placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him. 16Then Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
The Line of Cain
17Cain knew his wife intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Then Cain became the builder of a city, and he named the city Enoch after his son. 18Irad was born to Enoch, Irad fathered Mehujael, Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. 19Lamech took two wives for himself, one named Adah and the other named Zillah. 20Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of the nomadic herdsmen. 21His brother was named Jubal; he was the father of all who play the lyre and the flute. 22Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools. Tubal-cain’s sister was Naamah.
23 Lamech said to his wives:

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
wives of Lamech, pay attention to my words.
For I killed a man for wounding me,
a boy for striking me.
24If Cain is to be avenged seven times over,
then for Lamech it will be seventy-seven times!

25Adam knew his wife intimately again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” 26A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.