There are many things about God that just blow me away sometimes: one of these things is how He is so apt at illustrating things in the Word by using things in the world; another thing is how He orchestrates such revelations in such a timely manner.
There are hills in the area in which I live. For years now, I have seen what appears to be a very disabled man (stricken perhaps with MS?) riding a three wheeled bicycle (a large tricycle) up one of the very longest hills at an almost non-moving speed. I always attributed the speed at which he was barely moving as an indication of his handicap and I felt quite sorry for him. But recently I rode one of those three wheelers up a very small hill near my house and I could barely move it. Those bikes have no gears whatsoever, and the slightest incline might as well be Mount Rainier. I could have walked that bike up the hill three times as fast as I was riding it! Armed, therefore, with a little extra knowledge about the situation, I now look at that man, whether he is handicapped or not, and am amazed that he is even tackling that huge hill that he rides every day! If he is handicapped, it is all the more amazing, but even if he is not, I now know just how much strength it takes and I have an enormous amount of admiration at his tenacity and perseverance! Yet, I know that the majority of people who pass him each day (who have not ever ridden an adult three wheeler bike) just feel sorry for him without recognizing the tremendous feat he is accomplishing!
So might our perspective of Genesis 3:14-24 change if we added one extra little bit of knowledge. For example, one might get the idea that God is mercilessly laying a very heavy punishment (the curse) on the man and the woman (even the serpent is not spared!) by a quick reading of these passages. And after all, they did sin against almighty God! No wonder Adam and the woman ran and hid from God! They must have known what was coming their way was going to be really bad! Perhaps this is why we run and hide from God ourselves when we know we have sinned….we also are expecting His wrath! In fact, many people see God only as a wrathful God and never come any closer to see who He really is. The commission of believers is to reveal God's love to those folks who don't know God, so that they can come to see God in His fullness. A partial truth is a lie, it isn't the whole story so it isn't the real story. To know God one must know the entire truth about God; to form an opinion about God when one knows only one aspect is to believe something to be true that is false.
However, armed with more information one's entire perspective can change. For example: GOD LOVES US AND HIS LOVE FOR US NEVER CHANGES!
Knowing this then about God, how do these passages actually display His love for the man and the woman?
Well, that's what we are going to be exploring here, but it is actually in God's dealing with the serpent that we best see God's love for man. Let's consider just what it was that God prophesied over the serpent.
First, take note of a couple of things from the earlier passages in Genesis 3. For example, the blame game…you will note that God did not respond immediately to the woman's excuse of being beguiled, or even of Adam's blaming the woman that God had given to him as the real culprit here. Instead, who does God turn to first? The serpent. God is wise and God is just. He knows who the worst culprit is and He deals with him first. And what does He tell the serpent?
Well, he first tells the serpent that he will now go crawling around on his belly and eating dust. From this, we can only assume that the serpent, prior to this pronouncement from God, had legs perhaps, or wings, or maybe both, but certainly he did not start out as the snake that we are familiar with nowadays. Whatever he was prior to God's curse, the bible is not telling us.
Then God said the thing that gives us the first clue about His love for us: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed". GOD is putting that enmity there. It was not done by the serpent, nor by the woman, but by God. God has made the serpent (which we know is in some form Satan, a fallen angel) an enemy of the woman, and vice versa. What God is doing is declaring war against Satan, right here in the Garden; He is drawing a line in the sand of the Garden and we will see that He is standing on the side of the woman and her seed, standing against Satan and his seed. It is a war in which the woman and her seed will be involved, necessarily so because of their own rebellion, but his next statement shows which side will win.
God goes on to say that "You will bruise his heel, but he will bruise your head." It is a war in which the seed of the woman will have his heel bruised by the serpent, but the serpent will have his head bruised by the seed of the woman. A blow to the heel might be painful and debilitating, but it will not be deadly. But a bruise to the head of a serpent can destroy the serpent. In this, God is prophesying His ultimate victory against Satan, even though there will be casualties on both sides of this cosmic war. God is proclaiming victory for the seed of the woman, therefore, God is proclaiming victory for mankind. God is on the side of man, even though man is rebellious, because God loves man. God has plans to bring this victory about: plans to rescue man, and to restore man to his rightful inheritance (the earth before the Fall)….an inheritance that man handed over to the serpent for just one taste of the forbidden fruit…something that man continues to do today.
We have only scratched the surface today about all of this. Next we will see what is meant exactly by "the seed of the woman" (after all, the seed is not found in woman but in man, so what is meant by that?) We will hear more about who the serpent is and how and why he comes to bruise the heel of the seed of the woman; and we will see how his own head gets bruised. We will compare the pronouncements against the man with those endured by the Messiah (the second Adam) for man's sake. We will even see how the guardians set at the gate of the Garden were set there to actually benefit man, rather than just keeping him in exile. There is so much more to be "unpacked" from these few verses. I hope that you will find it all just as exciting as I do!
No comments:
Post a Comment