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REBELLION AND THE CURSE

(after day 6, c. 4004 B.C. and following)

It wasn’t long before man’s sin ruined the perfection of creation.

The earth was breathtaking. Its perfection would stand in awe-inspiring contrast to the terribly fallen world of today. Peace, tranquility, and joy were all that Adam and Eve knew. Evil, disease, and death had not yet gripped the world.

The Bible doesn’t say exactly how long it was before Satan spoke through the serpent,1 but it may have been only days or weeks before Adam’s disobedience brought the horrible impact of his sin on all creation.2 It is clear, however, that God decreed the Curse prior to when Eve conceived the first child.3

Genesis chapter 3 documents that through the serpent Satan deceived Eve. She sinned by eating fruit from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God had placed at the center of the Garden. Then she gave some to her husband, Adam.4 He was not deceived,5 but chose to rebel against God.

Through Adam, sin entered the world.6 The man and his wife realized they were naked and quickly sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. Later that day, God came walking in the Garden and called to Adam. However, he and Eve were hiding among the plants, so God confronted them.

Adam first blamed his wife, who gave the fruit to him. Then he blamed God, who gave the woman to him. Eve blamed the serpent, who deceived her.

Satan’s strategy to get man to follow him rather than God was not completely successful, but enough that everything changed. Before Adam sinned, there was no death in the world. Now, perfection was shattered. Suffering and dying had begun. Yet God was not taken by surprise. In response to man’s rebellion, He launched His plan for the eventual restoration of the perfection that will one day come through Jesus.7 He cursed the serpent, promising that one day he would receive a fatal blow from the offspring of the woman.8

Soon after God killed animals and made coats of skin to clothe the couple.9 Adam was driven out of the Garden, and neither he nor Eve would ever return.10 Then, God placed cherubim and a moving, flaming sword at the entrance, guards to block the way to the Tree of Life and as a reminder that it was here that sin, suffering, and death began.11 How sad they must have been!

Now outside the Garden, Adam labored against weeds and thorns, and the ground no longer yielded food easily.12 Eve was blessed with pregnancy, but the fear and pain during childbirth were undoubtedly intense, especially due to all the unknowns of the first child’s birth. Surely, the delivery of Cain was both awesome and bittersweet.13

Later, Abel and other sons and daughters were born.14 They married and had families of their own. Marriage between siblings and close relatives was fine until about 2,500 years later at the time of Moses, when God forbade close intermarriage, perhaps because the gene pool had become too corrupted.15

One day both Cain and Abel presented offerings to God. Abel brought fat portions from the firstborn of his flock, and Cain brought some of the fruit of his fields. God was pleased with Abel and his offering, but He was not pleased with Cain and his offering.16

The grief of Adam and Eve was surely extreme when Cain — filled with jealousy that God accepted Abel’s offering but not his — struck and coldheartedly killed his brother Abel. The first couple’s first son committed the world’s first murder. It would be hard to overstate the crushing heartache that must have gripped Adam and Eve, especially since it was their own disobedience years before that brought sin and its many miseries into the once-perfect world.

It may be that no parents have longed more intensely than Adam and Eve for the restoration that Jesus the Redeemer would one day bring to our terribly broken world.17

PRIMARY PASSAGES

Genesis 3–4; Romans 5:18–20; Revelation 12:4–10; Isaiah 14:12–15

KEY VERSE

“. . . sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Genesis 4:7

WRAP UP

“Eve believed Satan’s lie, and then Adam decided to disobey You, Lord, by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But thank You for not allowing them to keep eating from the Tree of Life. If they had not been kicked out of the Garden, they would have lived forever in the broken world with all of its sin and suffering, with no hope of everything being restored one day! Please help me to understand the big picture as I read to discover the key things that happened between the day Adam sinned, and the morning so many years later when Jesus rose from the dead!”

1 The serpent of Genesis 3 was laid hold of by the devil, Satan; Revelation 20:2.

2 Archbishop James Ussher proposed day 9 or 10 as the occasion of the first sin, based on Yom Kippur, the Hebrew “Day of Atonement,” which presumably represents the first sacrifice.

3 Genesis 3:14–4:2

4 Genesis 3:2–3 and 3:6

5 1 Timothy 2:14; Romans 5:12

6 Romans 5:12 “. . . through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin . . . .”

7 Acts 3:19–21

8 Genesis 3:15

9 The animal skins had to come from dead animals, so these animals were the first recorded death of anything in Scripture. They were killed as a direct result of mans’ sin.

10 Genesis 3:23–24 (and Romans 5:12) emphasize that the blame was laid squarely on Adam, not Eve. It was Adam that God banished from the Garden (“him,” v. 23) and it was Adam that God drove out (“the man,” v. 24). Both the man and his wife sinned (1 Tim. 2:14) and lived the rest of their lives with the impact of eating the forbidden fruit, but Adam was the one whom God held responsible.

11 Genesis 3:21–24. In addition to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — from which Adam and Eve ate in disobedience to God — there was also the Tree of Life. The first couple could no longer have access to and eat from the Tree of Life, which had not previously been forsaken to them.

12 Genesis 3:17–18

13 Genesis 4:1.

14 Genesis 5:4.

15 Adam and Eve’s original gene pool was perfect. They had no defects. By God’s design, brothers and sisters and cousins married, and their children were free of genetic deformities. It was not until the time of Moses, some 2,500 years after creation and 850 years after the Flood in about 1500 B.C., that God prohibited marriage between close relatives. (Also see “Cain’s Wife — Who Was She?” by Ken Ham, at www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/who-was-cains-wife.)

16 Genesis 4:4–5. Abel’s offering modeled what God did in the Garden of Eden as a covering for sin, but Cain’s did not. See also, “Why Didn’t God Respect Cain’s Offering?” by Peter Galling, and the sidebar by Dr. Henry Morris at https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/cain/why-didnt-god-respect-cains-offering/

17 Acts 3:19–21 (restoration, NKJV & NAS / restore, NIV).