Third curse coming up:  Gen.4:11-12 "And now you (Cain) are cursed from the earth which has opened her mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand;  When you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield to you her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shall you be in the earth."

 'Henceforth' means forever.  No reprieve.  And the only thing Cain knows how to do (till the ground) will not bear a crop.  Blood has been spilled on the ground and nothing will ever grow for Cain again.

And Cain finally gets it.  God is omnipotent.  He has passed judgment on Cain and Cain realizes that God is in control of the world and has the right to condemn him.  He has no hope.

So Cain cries out to God.  God, who alone can save him.  Gen. 4:13  "And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.  Behold you have driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from your face I will be hid; and I will be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one that finds me will slay me."

Punishment:  I think it was Billy Sunday who had a sermon titled: "Payday Someday", and someday is here for Cain.
1.  His punishment is greater than he can bear.
2.  Cain is to be driven out from the land he is living in, and from his parents.
3.  God's face will be hid from Cain from this time forward.
4.  Cain will be a fugitive and a vagabond.
5.  Everyone will be tracking him down and when they find him, they will kill him.

I have one question about all this.  Who were all these People that were going to track Cain down and kill him?  (I'll talk about this tomorrow.)
                                       

If God had not "Shut the gate", and closed Eden permanently,  Adam and Eve would have been kicking down the door to get back in.  But in Gen. 3:24, we read: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the East of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."  They weren't getting back in.  And any hope of eating of the Tree of Life was gone.  Like I said the other day:  "Dead man walking."  It was just a matter of when.

They were all stuck with each other--outside the gate.

Gen. 4:9  "And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother?  And he (Cain) said, I know not:  Am I my brothers keeper?"

Anger, murder, and now a huge lie.  In John 8:44 we read, "You are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father you will do.  He (Satan) was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him....for he is a liar, and the father of it (lying)."

And after Cain lies to God, he insults God's intelligence!!  He asks God a question--Cain thinks he can fool God.  He does not confess what he has done, and just like his parents before him, he is definitely not repentant.

"What have you done?"  God asks Cain.  And  if we were to put it into today's vernacular,  God is saying:  'Don't you know that I know everything!  Haven't your parents taught you anything about me?'  Then God tells Cain that, "...the voice of your brother's blood cries unto me from the ground."

And then God places a curse on Cain.  So far, everyone is cursed except Abel, and he's dead.

Things aren't going too well.

No food, no home, no place to go.   No domesticated oxen, no horses.  No chickens in the hen house.  No hen house.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  And no one to ask how to do anything.  But the worst possible thing was: no access to God.  All they had was what they remembered.  The memory of a perfect garden.  The memory of a friend called God.

From this point forward Man could only speak to God when God chose to speak to Man.  And there would be appointed places for this to occur.  In a tabernacle, in a temple, on a mountain.  Man would have to actively seek God.  The Bible says that man would seek the 'face' of God.  But no man would be allowed to see God's face.  This was now denied.

 Then Eve has sons: Cain and Abel.  Cain tilled the ground.  Abel tended sheep.  You have to wonder how long it took before Adam rounded up a herd of wild sheep, how long before he figured out a way to dig the earth up so he could plant it.  How long before his sons were able to help him.  Everything was very, very hard.

And Eve: childbirth without ever seeing a child born before.  No idea of what was coming next.  And the pain--and no way of knowing when it would end.  Would it be hours, or days?  The result of her curse didn't arrive as soon as Adam's did, but when it came, Eve could see into the future and expect to go through this pain every time she had a child.  For every child that has been born into the world, some woman has suffered.   And all for a piece of fruit.

And then Cain kills Abel.  Over a sacrifice.  God demanded a sacrifice to remind them of the payment that had been paid in the garden for sin.  Nothing but a sacrifice would do.  But Cain wanted to offer something else.  A shortcut.  And when God didn't accept it, Cain got mad and killed his brother.  A new sin occurs:  Anger.  And anger produces murder.  What a mess.  What a family.

When God breathed into man the "Breath of Life",  I personally believe that He filled a place, a place that He had created within man--in his brain, in his heart, in his soul...wherever it is--that is unique, not found in any other species.  A place that He, God,  intended to fill, to live in.

In Job 33:4, Job speaks with total understanding of what this means.  " The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life."  Like I said yesterday, without life, you're dead.

So God created man and entrusted him with all a man could ever want.  But Adam disobeyed God.   So God placed a curse on him and removed him--threw him out--of the garden.  Along with his wife.  The only thing they got to take with them was  'skin-coats'.   They now had to work for a living.  No house, no food, no place to go.  At the mercy of the elements.  At the mercy of Satan.

And their children, and their grand children would be born without the Breath of God.   And without access to the Tree of Life.  How could you bear it.  How could you bear the thought that your children would never know what it meant to walk in the garden with God or to have him as your friend.  And know that it was your fault.

But God had a plan to put Life  back in the human race.  However, until this plan came to pass,  people were born empty with no hope of being filled with God's Spirit.  Born looking for something to fill the void in their lives.

We try to fill our lives with stuff.  With any number of things that destroy us.  Things that kill our sensitivity.  Today the term is "Making wrong choices".  (God calls it sin.)  Animals don't do this.  We do.

People today are still born empty, but now there is hope.

The first death (In the garden of Eden is about to occur).  God is going to sacrifice an animal to cover their sin.  Off with the aprons, on with the animal pelts.  God made them coats.  I wonder if this implies that they were going to have to suffer " the cold".   They will be cursed with horrible weather I am sure.

Gen. 3:21  "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them."
This is the beginning of sacrifices among the people of God.  It makes the phrase, "The lion will lie down with the lamb,"  all the more meaningful.   That's the description of heaven:  Nothing, or no one, will  need to  be afraid of being killed ever again.

Death has come.  But that's not the worst of it.

Gen. 3:22-24a "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.  So he drove out the man,,,"

There is a phrase in that section: "...lest he put forth his hand, an take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever..."   Adam was now denied the Tree of Life.   His future, which could have stretched out in front of him forever, was now doomed.  He was denied Life.  He was now one of the living dead.  God told him if he ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree he would die.  He died.

So Adam is now dead.  He just doesn't know it yet.  Without Life, all humans are dead.  You have to have Life to be alive!!  Romans l6:23 "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. "

The ultimate sacrifice is far in the future.  But this explains why Christ is called the "Tree of Life."

The second curse was for Eve.  Gen. 3:16  "To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;  in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you."  

I get it.  I've had five children.  They're a joy after the fact, but getting them here is a bummer. 

I also get it about the husband ruling over the wife.  They're bigger.  They're stronger.  God got to choose who was the biggest and the strongest.  It wasn't Eve.  

The third curse was for Adam.  Gen. 3:l7-19  And to Adam he said, Because you have harkened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat of it:  Cursed is the ground for your sake;  in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days to your life;  Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; and you shall eat of the herb of the field;  In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread until you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you aren, and to dust shall you return."

Basically, what God was telling Adam was that feeding those children that Eve was going to have, was going to be awful.  He would have sweat pouring down his face and the ground wasn't going to cooperate.   Up to this point, God had provided their food.  Now he was going to eat bread.  That meant that he was going to have to dig, and plant, and harvest.  No more laying around picking dinner off a tree.  Work had just been invented. 

Things are going from bad to worse; and God isn't done with them yet.  What a pity.

  

Gen. 3:11  "And he (God) said, Who told you that you were naked?"  Adam didn't even know what 'naked' meant in the minutes before he grabbed some leaves, made an apron and hid.  But he knew now.  And then God said, "Have you eaten of the tree, that I commanded you that you should not eat?"  God already knew the answer to that.  The question was rhetorical.

Adam should have said:  "Yes.  I did it; I ate it."  But in true human form, he blamed someone else.  He blamed Eve.   Gen. 3:12  "And the man said, The woman that you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat."  Actually Adam was blaming God.  Adam came out of the bushes where he was hiding and told God that if God had just left well enough alone, and not created a woman in the first place, then Adam wouldn't have sinned.  So logically, God was to blame.

So God turned to the woman, and said:  Gen. 3:13 "...What is this that you have done?"  That's a very simple question.  She should have answered, "I did what you told us not to do.  I ate the forbidden fruit.  I'm so sorry."  But she didn't.  She blamed the serpent.  What a gal, "It's not really my fault,"  she explained,  "The devil made me do it."  Or in the words of the Bible:  "...The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."

Beguiled.  She just couldn't help herself.  You can almost see her shrugging her shoulders.

And the punishment begins.  God curses the serpent, and instead of being beautiful, he was condemned to eat dust, and crawl on its belly.  He becomes a snake.  (Gen. 3:14)  So the word "serpent" and "snake" are sometimes used interchangeably, but in Genesis, they are two different things.  Many paintings in Art Galleries show Eve being tempted by a snake.  Not so.

But Adam and Eve get the worst curses.   Eve first, then Adam.