January 31, 2017
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Consequences!

Please see the links to our EXTRA Bible Study notes at the bottom of the page.

Opening Prayer

Fix my heart on You, Lord. Enlighten me with new truth from Your Word today.

Read Genesis 3:14–24

For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.

[14] So the LORD God 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. [15] 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.” [16] 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.” [17] To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. [18] It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. [19] By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” [20] Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. [21] The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. [22] And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” [23] So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. [24] After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“Good and evil increase at compound interest. Little decisions are of infinite importance. The smallest good act today captures a strategic point which could lead to undreamed-of victories” (C. S. Lewis, 1898—1963; quotation abbreviated).

The decision that Adam and Eve made was to eat the forbidden fruit. The direct consequence was that they would die. The writer of Genesis wants us to be very clear about the link between human disobedience to God and human death. The indirect consequences went much wider. Note that—in spite of popular assumptions based apparently on medieval traditions and art—neither the woman nor the man is cursed by God. The only curses mentioned are directed at the snake and at the earth itself. For the humans, however, life on that earth, which should and could have been an everlasting joy, would become difficult. The relationship between man and woman, between humanity and the ground and between humans and God were all affected, all to some degree spoiled. The loving cooperation, which is presupposed in the earlier verses, becomes an aggressive competition. Neither the creation itself nor the relationships mentioned were totally destroyed, but they were spoiled—and we only have to look out on the world as we know it today to see evidence of that. Banishment from the garden is often assumed to be a further punishment, but it can also be seen as a gracious concession from God. To live forever with such spoiled relationships would be unbearable and could not be allowed to happen. There had to be a different way forward. Verse 24 makes it clear that there is no going back to their former state by some kind of returning to the garden, but God’s desire for a real and close relationship with human beings had not changed. The rest of Scripture sets out God’s plans for eventually making that relationship possible and also for renewed relationship between men and women and for humans with a renewed earth.

Apply

The new heaven and earth are not yet here, but how has Jesus’ coming already changed (or could change) your relationship with God, with other people and with creation?

Closing prayer

Lord God, I praise You for Jesus, who has given us the way back to a relationship with You.

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