The Curse, God's Remedy for Humans - Zack Morgan

God never cursed Adam. God never cursed Eve. It was to Adam's advantage that the ground would yield thorn and thistles.

So I'm doing it all the old-fashioned way today. We're not going to have any verses on the screen, and Daniel's not around, and I got my message done late last night. So yeah, we're going to be doing it the good old way. The title of my message today is The Curse: God's Remedy for Humans.

The Curse: God's Remedy for Humans. So when I was 15, I had a classmate named Ryan, and Ryan didn't have very good health. Ryan could walk with a walker, but he was mostly wheelchair-bound.

Within a week after Ryan's 13th birthday party, Ryan got pneumonia, and several days later, he passed away. I'd got to know Ryan fairly well our last year in school. We went to a small private school, a typical Mennonite school where you have several grades in one classroom.

So I was a couple of years older than Ryan, but my desk was next to his the last year of school, and so I helped Ryan quite a bit, and I got to know him, and he was my friend. His death was a shock to me and, of course, to our whole community.

Last time I preached was Easter morning, and my grandpa was in hospice at the time. He had reconciled his life to Christ a couple of days prior. He had reconciled his life with others.

And we had prayed for my grandpa for many years, as I've told you after his passing. We had prayed for him for many years. He had many close calls. There's just a whole list of things where my grandpa could have died from, but he did not till Easter. And he had many close calls, but he stayed hard-hearted almost to the very end.

And somehow, looking death straight in the face softened him, and my grandpa passed away the day after Easter.

So this isn't unique to me. We all have faced or we will face death sooner or later.

The reality is dealing with death is healthy for the living. We see how weak we are, and it's a time to recalibrate our life. It's time to look at life and prioritize the things that matter most. Ryan passed away before I became a Christian.

At Ryan's viewing, I was thanked personally by his family and especially by his parents for my friendship and help to Ryan. And I wasn't the only one who helped Ryan. There was his grade that was with him for all those years.

But that helped me to see how my actions, good or bad, will have eternal consequences. And I got a tiny taste of what it means to have the reward for doing good when you can't reverse your actions anymore.

And that glimpse that I got from that experience helped me, a couple of years later, repent of my sin and follow Jesus. It helped me see the reward of living well and doing good to others.

If you have your Bibles, open to Genesis 3.

We're going to be reading from Genesis 3, verse 9 through 24. So we all know this story. So I'm just going to be going over the curse after the fall, after Adam and Eve's sin. That starts on verse 9.

Genesis 3, verse 9. "Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, 'Where are you?' So he said, 'I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.'

And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?' Then the man said, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.' And the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'

So the Lord said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust 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 your head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' To the woman, he said, 'I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.'

Then to Adam, he said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.'

And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was mother of all living. Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now, let's he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.' Therefore, the Lord sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and he placed cheer of him at the east of the garden in a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.'

God said, 'In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.' Life is coupled with death.

From dust you were formed to dust you will return.

We grapple with the fact that we are moving closer and closer to death every day.

So in 3:15, God promised a Savior, and then he drove them out of the garden. Why did God drive Adam and Eve out of the garden?

So God said, 'They've become like one of us, like know good and evil, unless he take of the tree and live forever.' So you could view that God is getting jealous of his position. That's a way that I've seen in the past that God was jealous of his position. He felt threatened.

Or you could view it as God's mercy to Adam and Eve. God did not want them to eat of the tree of life and live forever in a sinful state. It was his mercy. He knew that they were weak, and he knew that they could fail. And he didn't want them to live forever in that sinful state.

Death is a result of sin. Death is a punishment for sin. But thank God we don't live here forever. We have that promise that the serpent's head was crushed. They had the promise that the serpent's head was crushed. And thank God that we don't have to live here forever and that we have a hope of a future. In the early martyrs, reading from the martyrs' mirror, the early martyrs viewed their death as a liberation, liberated from the body of sin.

All right. So Adam, then to Adam, he said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.'

God never cursed Adam. God never cursed Eve. God cursed the serpent, and God cursed the ground. That's an important point to realize.

Adam and Eve did not get cursed. The serpent and the ground was cursed.

God said, 'Cursed is the ground for your sake.'

It was to Adam's advantage that the ground was cursed. Cursed is the ground for your sake. It was to Adam's advantage that the ground would yield thorn and thistles. So there's some practical advantages that we experience.

We all know it's satisfying to work, to work hard and to accomplish something difficult. There's a reward that we experience from that. There's a sense of accomplishment when we complete a difficult task. So these are some basic, obvious points why difficulty can be a blessing.

In this passage, work, death, and life has now become intertwined. It's just all together. Dust to dust, life to death, thorns and thistles equals competition. Sweat of the face equals work. So today, I don't want to sound like I'm romanticizing the curse, but I want to help us see a more historical perspective on the curse.

And I want us to see that the curse had a redeeming factor in it and that it was for the human's greater good why God cursed the ground and he cursed the serpents.

As I was thinking about this, I feel like I have, and I feel like many people today, they view the curse the same way a three-year-old views a spanking. And it's a very immature way of viewing discipline.

A three-year-old views a spanking of, "I did wrong, so I'm going to get hurt." And that is the limit of how they—that's their comprehension, right? And of course, they grow. And our hope is that they become a better person. It's for their greater good. And our punishment for the sin, Adam and Eve's punishment, it was for their greater good.

So I'm going to paraphrase Chrysostom. And he said that when Adam and Eve sinned, God did all these good things for Adam and Eve. And even though he did all these good things, Adam and Eve sinned. And Chrysostom says essentially that God didn't just give up on Adam and Eve and throw his hands in the air.

And I quote, "Rather, he came immediately to Adam, spoke to him, consoled him. Again, God gave Adam another remedy, the remedy of toil and sweat."

We face off with death through work, through struggle. We work to survive, fighting against the thorns and thistles.

God cursed the ground for the benefit of the humans. And you may be asking, "How is it to our benefit? How is it to our benefit?" Let me ask you this. How would it be to live in a fallen world and face no resistance?

Just think about that for a little bit. How would it be to live in a fallen world and face no resistance?

What if fallen humans could accomplish whatever they wished to? Our potential to commit evil would be enormous. And these are small examples of very, very wealthy people that get into a lot of trouble is because they have so much more potential to do evil. They have so much more resources. There's less resistance that they face. And we see over and over again, men that have power, men that have wealth, they get in trouble.

Thorns and thistles, competition, whatever you want to call it, is a check limit on the humans who live in this fallen world. The friction that we face is for our own benefit. This friction builds character, patience, and it limits our ability to commit evil.

We know that the sweat of our brow doesn't have to be physical work. Whatever we do for work, it's going to be difficult. And there are challenges that you will face in any industry. I know a farmer that doesn't plant GMO crops.

And so GMO crops is genetically modified crops. From my understanding of farming, it's genetically modified crops, and you can spray Roundup, and it kills the weeds, and the plants don't die. And he says that spraying using GMO crops is not working by the sweat of your brow. It's too easy.

And the fact is that we don't need to go out of our way to make our work difficult.

The friction we face, there's going to be challenges and difficulty no matter what. That's the world we live in. And it doesn't matter what you are doing, whether you have an office job or you work physically with your hands. There's going to be challenges. There's going to be difficulties, and there's going to be competition that is for our own good.

All right. So what about Eve? Eve was given pain, labor, and sweat. If you haven't had a baby or your wife's had a baby, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. But there is pain, there is labor, and sweat. There is a lot of work into giving birth and to raising children.

Her job was given to give birth and to raise children. So as with Adam, there are some practical benefits to that as well.

There's a feeling of self-worth, satisfaction after completing a difficult work. So whether that's giving birth to a child or raising children to adulthood, there is joy and there's satisfaction in raising children. The other thing is Eve came under Adam's authority.

Let's turn to 1 Timothy 2:12-15.

1 Timothy 2:12.

"And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression."

Paul's point is that women as a whole are more susceptible to deception.

That doesn't apply to every woman, of course. The same thing applies with it doesn't mean all men are stronger than women. There are some women that are stronger than some men. But as a whole, women are more susceptible to deception.

And this was not implemented to degrade women.

Rather, this is for everyone's benefit. And I've heard someone say, "People struggle with this first. For Adam was first formed, or Eve was first deceived, or Eve was deceived, Adam wasn't deceived." And I've heard people struggle with this and saying, "Well, women aren't dumb." Well, that's a bad question to say. It has nothing to do with women being dumb or not. It's just their role. It's the same thing with saying men don't have the sixth sense or the intuition that we talk about. There are some things that women are better at as a whole than men. And in this case, men tend to be able to be more resilient.

And the fact is there's a redemptive factor in this. This wasn't just implemented so that women are punished and women are put below. That's a horrible image. That's a horrible image to think that way. But this was implemented for the greater good of the woman, for the greater good of men, and for the greater good of their families.

We know here at this church, we talk about leadership a lot. And we realize and we see good leadership that has huge blessings to good leadership. And God is setting up what a good leadership should look like.

This creates a more stable and safe environment for everyone. And for the most part, we see that churches that have only men teachers have maintained the course and have been able to maintain biblical doctrine. And families where men lead are more stable.

Men and women have their own roles.

So verse 15, "Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control." Could someone just quickly explain what does "she'll be saved in childbearing" mean? Well, I can't either. And the fact is nobody can.

Brother David spent quite a bit of time with me on this. And historically, there is really no consensus. There are some ideas what this means. But we really don't know how women are saved in childbearing.

But we need to have faith, and we need to believe that. There is a redemptive factor in that. As childbearing is a remedy for the women, thorns and thistles is a remedy for the man.

John 16:21, I'll read this quickly. "A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world." So God told Eve, He said, "Sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children."

And Jesus is saying, "A woman having a child eclipse the whole difficulty. All the sorrow is eclipsed by having this child."

And I believe that the point between accomplishment and difficulty, that point in the middle is where we find that point between sweat and toil and anguish. Right that point in the middle is where we find joy and meaning and just the beauty to life.

So men and women have roles. So my encouragement to men is to lean into the difficulty for providing for your family. Look at competition as a good thing. In business, you hear competition is a good thing because it creates more business. But it's good for us personally, whether you work for a business, whether you own your business. The difficulties that we face in work are good.

It's for our own spiritual benefit.

And lead your families well. Lead your church well for the benefit of all. And to mothers, I want to encourage you, find purpose in your work. I've heard mothers say they need to have jobs to find fulfillment. And there's times where women need to work, and that's okay.

But a woman's fulfillment, a mother's fulfillment should be in her family. You need to find your fulfillment and purpose in raising your family.

So at creation, God created man in His own image. He told the humans to rule and have dominion over this earth. They were to be God's representatives here on this earth. At the same time, God put man in the garden to dress and keep it. Whatever that means, whatever it means to dress and keep of a garden, I know people get a little jumpy at this, but Adam had a work to do. He had a job to do.

And maybe it was picking fruit. Maybe your theology is okay with saying that there were weeds before the garden, just no thorns and thistles, whatever you take on that. He had a job to do.

And it's interesting to note that work was not a result of the fall. Work existed before the fall.

Adam was an ambassador for God. He was put here to rule and have dominion.

Or I should say the humans. When God blessed the humans, He said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill this earth and have dominion. Be creative. Build communities."

So the humans, they weren't just a gardener at some times and then image bearer at other times. They were both gardeners and image bearers.

So we who are the new creation, we also bear Christ's image to the world. We have a twofold purpose: to represent Christ to the world and to work providing for ourselves and taking care of the things God has given us, taking care of the garden, taking care of our community, being creative. So we can't say, "I'm going to be an image bearer and not work," because being an image bearer is the most important role that I have to represent God to the world.

Our two roles are intertwined. They are not mutually exclusive. We do them at the same time. There is a balance to that, though. So on one hand, if we don't work and provide for our needs in our house, Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:8 that we are worse than an infidel.

So if you don't work and provide for yourself, not a great image bearer. You're not really representing Christ well. On the other hand, if we get caught up with the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches, we can get choked and become unfruitful. Jesus says, "Now he who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the word and the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful."

This just hit me this week when I realized, "Oh, wow. Jesus is saying, 'Don't let the curse get the best of you when you're working. Don't let it get the best of you. Don't let it get the upper hand.'" We can get so preoccupied with pulling the thorns and the thistles, making a living, that the very thing that we do, Jesus says, is what kills us spiritually.

The spiritual thorns come in, and we're choked, and we become unfruitful. So what an irony. What an irony.

We become obsessed with pulling thorns and thistles, but in the end, we are choked spiritually. If we accumulate more wealth than what we need, the answer to materialism isn't to stop working, but the answer to materialism is generosity. You then give your excess away. Instead of greed, it becomes more like the Garden of Eden, plenty for all.

My view in the past on work was that the most spiritual Christians spent as much time possible in evangelism. Working to make a living was a necessary evil. Fortunately, that's not true.

The truth is that the physical and the spiritual, they're not divorced. They're intertwined together. How we work in this physical world affects us spiritually.

So instead of viewing my work as, "I'm pouring a concrete sidewalk," I now view my work as, "I'm pouring a sidewalk so people don't have to walk through the mud." We should ask ourselves, and I think this is a good test for anyone looking at your job, is what I do for work, does it build my community? Does it help make this world a better place?

If the answer is yes, then our secular job has a spiritual purpose.

Turn with me to John 9.

John 9:1. I'll be reading to verse 7.

"Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.

I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' When he had said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with saliva, and he anointed the eyes of the blind with the clay.

And he said, 'Go wash in the pool of Siloam.' So he went and washed and came back seeing." So before Jesus's ministry, Jesus would have spent many years probably as a carpenter. And it's interesting for me, I'm turning 30 this year, and to think that Jesus spent his whole life, all the life that I've lived so far, Jesus would have spent working.

And I believe that Jesus lived all of his life as an example to us.

Jesus's ministry lasted only a few years. Most of his life would have been spent working a normal job. And I believe that those lives weren't wasted. They were preparing him for his three very important years of ministry.

In this account, when Jesus anointed the eyes of the blind with clay, I wonder why he did that. Was it a symbolism of forming Adam from the dust of the ground? Was Jesus taking the clay and saying, "This is how I really made you. This is how you're supposed to be"?

Was it the same way that he took clay and formed Adam from the ground? No, I don't know. We do know that Jesus came preaching the kingdom, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, working, bringing sight, healing, and life to the people.

Jesus left us the ultimate example of redemptive work.