MEASURE UPON MEASURE – CURSE – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 5
CHAPTER THREE - THE THIRD CONSEQUENCE
The third CONSEQUENCE of man’s sin through the fall has resulted in a vast array of problems on this earth. It is bordering on the impossible with our confinement to the present world conditions, to imagine a perfect world where all was at harmony and the climate was always correct; the fruit was perfect in every aspect and no afflictions or pestilences were anywhere to be found. Adam with Eve tended the paradise in which God had placed them.
Their lives were immersed in the uncorrupted beauty with the wonderful synchronised and harmonious co-dwelling of all animal life, and the ordered fertility and unhindered productivity of all that grew in the ground. That’s how it was with no stress or concerns. However all changed.
SERENITY RUINED
We have already seen how sin has caused a terrible hemorrhaging in God’s created order about which it had been written, “and God saw that it was good.” With Serenity Ruined, all around are the undeniable evidences of a world in departure from the harmony and meaning with which the original creation was infused. Sin destroyed everything that was perfect.
What has brought about such a disruptive departure along with the chaotic disorder which is all part and parcel of our world? The bible is unequivocal in the answer - there was a large scale CURSING that was responsible for it. The mention of this cursing is first encountered in Genesis 3:14, after the progression of events resulting in the fall, had surfaced. The man blamed the woman and indirectly, God, in verse 13; and the woman blamed the serpent. Then God addressed the serpent:
And the Lord God said to the serpent in Genesis 3:14-15, {{“Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life. 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.”}}
SIN’S RESULTS
Those two verses contain much material that would probe the Satanic origin of sin, but that would be tangential for us here. There are however some conclusions I wish to draw from these verses.
(a). FIRSTLY, God’s initial, direct confrontation with the snake results in a precise pronouncement of a curse that ensued the snake was humiliated more than all other animals, that is, it was subjected to a greater cursing. Its domain would be the dust of the ground even though we know numbers of snakes live in trees. We can only surmise at this juncture that the serpent must have enjoyed a place of beauty and honour in the garden paradise that distinguished it from other members of the animal creation. As a result of allowing itself to be Satan’s agent, great therefore is the curse upon it.
It has been suggested that originally the snake moved in an upright position or at least was able to “stand”. We can’t speculate, but there is one certainty. Whoever lifts up his spirit against God will be brought to the lowest depths. Pride was the original sin. It belonged to Lucifer who schemed he could overthrow God and he received a just punishment. He was thrown down; down from heaven, just like the snake was thrown down to the dust. Man’s original sin was disobedience.
(b). The SECOND fact suggesting itself to us is that there was a widespread curse upon all living creatures, this being prompted by the phrase, “more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field.” The cursing upon the whole of all animal creation has one manifestation at least - it has caused the preying of one member on another which we naturally accept in the world of men as the established order, or the law of nature, or survival of the fittest, but it once was not so. Sin’s Results are awful, indeed.
Darwin would reject the original harmony of all animal life in his godless evolution. He based all this satanic delusion on the survival of the fittest and imagined that over millions of years, mindless chaos (he called it evolution) could randomly arrive at the immensely complex life forms and even produce the unfathomable human brain. There is no accounting what man can conjecture when God has been cast away.
(c). The THIRD aspect derived from the two verses is the strong prophetic angle of verse 15. God is addressing Himself beyond the snake to Satan in person. Here we have been informed that there will be enmity between the righteous and unrighteous lines and this is clearly seen in the history of Israel.
The promised seed of God, the Deliverer, the Prophet, the Anointed One would come through Eve’s line and on through Abraham’s line, and the Devil’s attacks against the Jewish nation in the quest to destroy the divinely promised one, were constant and often ruthless, and many agents such as Haman and Herod were available to carry out his work, but God thwarted them in the preservation of His nation. Nevertheless the Saviour, in picture, has crushed (bruised) the serpent’s head while sustaining a bruised heel Himself. He conquered Satan’s power, but that victory was exacted at a cost.
The picture there is of a man who stamps on the serpent’s head to kill it but is bitten in the process and his heel is bruised. The Lord Jesus Christ stamped on Satan’s head at the cross but it was at great cost to Himself. Satan’s power is defeated, and the power of death, for all who trust Christ, but Satan is still powerful in the world.
In summary so far, the third terrible consequence of sin has resulted in a cursing upon all created earthly life, but upon the snake, the curse has been the most severe. But that is only the beginning of the comprehensiveness of the curse. Then a little further along in Genesis 3:17-19 comes this ominous announcement;
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 shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; 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.”}}
(d). THE GROUND IS CURSED. Even Lamech acknowledged that in Genesis 5:29. It will not willingly yield produce. Corrupting flora will thrive. Pests of all shapes and sizes will be active in their ravaging work. Toil and sustained effort will be required to produce food. The consequences of man’s sin have not only produced guilt and shame and separation, but also now, the horrendous harvest of human disobedience is clearly obvious in the earth, for the earth has been cursed. What a terrible devastation has been wrought; what a hurtful legacy we have inherited!
THE CURSED EARTH displays a multitude of hardships and pestilences to highlight that curse. Probably a farmer more than anyone else can testify to that fact. His crops are in peril from soil diseases, insects, bushfires and droughts and floods. The drought is often broken by a flood which might provide hope of a better season next time around, but then the increased favourable conditions produce plagues of mice and grasshoppers.
(e). There is an ever constant war raged against insect pests which have a remarkable capacity to develop immunity to sprays and other pest control measures. There are ongoing serious plant diseases. Noxious weeds, vines and burrs are all part of the problems resulting from the curse pronounced upon the earth.
Certainly, all the diseases we have that can afflict humans and animals, and even plants, can be attributed likewise to the curse. These can take various forms, be they air-travelling germs responsible, or vermin borne ones, or diseases whose origins are genetically based.
(f). The reasons for genetic malformations which allow children to be born with awful physical problems or disfiguring deformities, are very hard to explain to cynics who speak of “a god” or of “a god of love” in scathing terms, yet we know it comes under the umbrella of the curse, however hard or impossible it is to explain that to a non-Christian, and sometimes even to a Christian.
The principle of the curse has been set in motion, but increasing sin will bring new aspects of that curse into operation. Homosexuality leading to the AIDS virus is abundant proof of that, so adequately covered by Paul in Romans 1 v 26-27.
(g). Devastating famines in poor African countries, swarms of pests which ruin crops and spread diseases, disruptions of nature such as heat waves and floods and cyclones along with many other categories of extremes and abnormalities in the physical world, are all features of the CURSING pronounced over the earth, the third consequence of man’s sin. The hardship of daily work and the drudgery of it were stated outcomes of the curse. “By the sweat of your brow,” literally meant that.
THE SAVIOUR’S ROAD
We are now ready to look at the Saviour’s Road in respect to this consequence. The examination undertaken briefly into the curse in this article has looked at the widespread results of that curse mainly in the physical realm. In order to understand our Saviour’s identification in this third consequence, we need to open up one further aspect of the curse, one which Paul develops in his letter to the Galatians Christians.
Jehovah gave the Law through Moses to the Jewish nation so that the righteous standard required by God might be established. Man, by the complete keeping of the Law, would be counted as being righteous in God’s sight. Thus God’s yardstick was given and it set the divine standard. The reality of the situation was that no human being was able to keep all the aspects of the Law perfectly before God.
To single out the Ten Commandments alone is enough to condemn the person trying to keep them, for if all are kept but one, the failure in that one is enough to bring the condemnation of the Law’s penalty upon the head of the keeper. And by NOT keeping the Law in its entirety, then the keeper can NOT be declared righteous, but falls under the condemnation and curse of the Law. Paul explains this in verse 10 of Galatians chapter 3. {{“For as many as are of the works of the Law ARE UNDER A CURSE; for it is written, “CURSED is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them.”}} (Galatians 3:10)
Thus all who have tried to gain righteousness through the keeping of the Law, have fallen under its curse. That same truth was explained some 1400 years earlier to the people by Moses in the chapter that categorises items of cursing. I want to select only the last verse, Deuteronomy 27:26. {{“CURSED IS HE who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And all the people shall say, “Amen.”}}
Does that make the Law bad? Not at all. Paul says in Galatians 3:24 that the law was the tutor to lead the seeker to Christ. The conclusion to this Law keeping is drawn in {{Galatians 3:11: “that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “The righteous man shall live by faith.”}} Paul wishes his readers to know very emphatically that the effort to keep the Law will result in a curse, and that no one can be justified by keeping the Law.
JUST HOW DID CHRIST IDENTIFY WITH THIS CURSE? Paul also deals with that in Galatians 3:13. {{“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, “CURSED is everyone who hangs on a tree.”}}
That is our key verse. Christ became a curse for us. In that act, there was true identification. Our own efforts at righteousness would only deliver a curse, but He became cursed for us, so that the removal of the curse might occur through faith in His accomplished work at Calvary. Now we have been redeemed through faith, not through the Law. It was a cursed thing to hang from a tree, but the Lord accepted it for the joy that lay ahead of Him, the joy of His redeemed Church, His very own purchased Bride. I do not want to draw any more from Galatians but much about the Law is raised in that book.
Crucifixion was a Roman form of a death of torture, and it was not permitted by the Jew to engage in such a form of execution. In the Lord’s case, such was the nation’s hatred of Him, that they expediently handed over Jesus to die in that prescribed way. In this sense, THE NATION CURSED THEIR OWN MESSIAH by their manipulation for Him to die in that fashion. Thus He was cursed because He hung from “wood”, (tree, cross, stake, all being loose alternatives) but He was cursed for us, because it lay on the road for our salvation.
None of us would willingly choose rejection in a public arena. It would be too humiliating. The Lord, though, chose not only rejection, but willingly took upon Himself our guilt, shame, separation, and was cursed for us. All that, is embodied in the verse considered in Chapter 1, “He became sin for us.” When He became sin, He appropriated the consequences of our sin.
Continued in next message.
