Subscribe Daily Bible Study Mailing List Receive Daily Bible Studies directly into your email inbox.
Express your comments, opinions, questions, etc.
You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
Daily Bible Study
Genesis 3:17-19
Lesson # Genesis 3:17-19
Study Material - Genesis 3:17-19
You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
Gen. 3:17-19
17 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. 18 'Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you shall eat the plants of the field; 19 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.'
Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee. Adam blamed the woman, but God is not fooled. 'You, Adam, listened to the woman.' Eve did not force Adam, she did not tie him down and ram the fruit down his throat. Adam didn't even hesitate. He 'listened'. He made a conscious decision, knowing full well the transgression he was going to make, and he did it. Kind of like taking a step in the fog. You know that the cliff is right there, and you know you will fall. You just cannot see the bottom because of the fog. Then you take the step anyway and get the shock of your life. Adam did not grasp the magnitude of his decision until after he made it. But he certainly did after he made it. And he learned much more in the years to come by observation and experience with other people.
Adam listened to his wife. He did not listen to God. When you get your arrogance up and you disregard God, you always find yourself in trouble. Your soul is incapable of handling life without some stabilizing force. And that stabilizing force comes from doctrine in the soul. Without it your soul lacks the nourishment and resources to remain healthy and strong. Your soul deteriorates, and so does your mental state, and then your health and so forth. You simply deteriorate completely. Perhaps you remember the description of Herod in the Matthew study. He was in a sad state of affair mentally and physically. Some people deteriorate rapidly and some more slowly. We all eventually reach the point of death and then our eternal state is right in our face.
Adam should have listened to God and he would have remained in the Garden, but he joined his wife in sin and thus brought the curse on the earth and on mankind. Now do not get the idea that you should sin to make opportunity for others. Don't rationalize that if Adam did not sin then we would not exist, therefore the sin was a blessing for us, the rest of the human race. Wrong conclusion. The angels were far superior to Adam and they failed. God had looked down the time tunnel and knew that Adam would fail, but that this was the best possible solution for all of creation. Adam teaches us a principle too. If you make the wrong decisions you buy trouble for yourself and possibly others. Even if you know all the right things you can still make bad decisions. So never think that you have arrived at a point of perfection in life. In this life you never will. But you always have the choice and opportunity to avoid mistakes.
The ground was cursed as a result. God supplied in the Garden all manner of food, but now that blessing has been canceled by mans decision. Now the earth will bring forth thistles and weeds and such. Man will have to work for his food in this life. Apart from God there is nothing but hard work and toil. From the Garden of blessing to the desert or jungle of this world is what sin has caused. The Garden was plush. The world under the production of sin is a desert. Life without God is a jungle, dog eat dog. Psa. 68:6, those who reject God choose the barren land for their residence. Life apart from God is emptiness, non-productive, delusion.
In toil man will live and eat of the production of the ground. Rejection of God is a life of toil. Real production comes from heaven. The production of sin comes from the earth, and the earth is nothing but dirt. How can dirt compete or even compare with heaven? How can the created compare with the creator?
Were it not for the promise of some blessing to come, salvation and the seed of the woman, the world would only produce weeds and would eventually self destruct. The preservative in this world is the salt of the world, Gods word, doctrine in the soul. And in this world we have to live among the thorns and thistles of sin and life apart from our true home which is in heaven. And we have to survive and tolerate this world as we live our lives.
This is not a perfect world and life is not going to be wonderful every day of your life. We all have differences. Some have physical defects, some mental defects. Some have advantages, some do not. Some have to work and some don't. Life isn't fair and never will be. Appliances fail, vehicles require maintenance, toys break, bills pile up. So we all have to live in this world of weeds. The only way to get on a level playing field is through Bible doctrine. On the spiritual field, we all have equal advantage, and equal opportunity. God is fair, totally.
Rom. 5:12, death came into this world through sin. If Adam had not sinned, he would not have died. Sin produced death. But through sin man will sooner or later die physically and return the dust from whence he came, and this is the biological part of man. The soul of course returns to God from whence it came, assuming of course that the soul has been saved through faith in Christ. Otherwise the soul goes to Torments awaiting the final judgment. See the chart on Hades on the Index page under Images.
God reminds Adam that he came from the dust. So much for mans righteousness. Anytime you get on a high horse of your own, just remember that you came from the dust that that horse is going to potty on. Have to use a nice word here. Otherwise here on the ranch we have some nice 'French' words. But this lesson is rated 'G', so anyhow.... Adam is reminded that he is the lowest of the low in this world. Our righteousness is worthless. We did not create anything in life or in this universe. We are a product of Gods blessing.
Rom. 7:1-5, sin is our bondage. Just as the woman is subjected to the authority of her husband, so man is the subordinate of sin. Adam sinned and through one man, Adam, all of mankind sinned. So the picture of the woman in submission to her husband, is also a picture of mankind in submission to sin. We are slaves to sin and our only way out is through Christ and salvation and then spiritual growth. Throughout history women have taken second seat to men, and thus Gods illustration of mans subordination to sin remains intact. Even women's liberation will not change that. What God has ordained will remain in place and there is nothing we can do to change it. Women who fight the system God has put in place, are in effect fighting God, and they will lose. Men who fight life and oppose God are in effect fighting God and they will lose.
God cursed the serpent directly. This is the curse of Satan and his judgment was sealed as of that moment. Satan could have sat back and done nothing and might have postponed everything against himself. But sin and evil cannot hold back at the opportunity to hurt others with the possibility of promoting its self. The woman wasn't cursed directly. Only the birth process and the subordination to a husband. Man was not cursed directly, only the ground he was to work.
God had blessing in mind for mankind, and only established the boundaries for the game of human history which was going to unfold. These boundaries serve as teachers for us all, and as reminders of the events in the Garden and the results of rejecting God. In our daily lives we are to study His word and enrich our souls with spiritual food, so that we can avoid the trauma of this life by means of the protection that Bible doctrine, spiritual growth, and fellowship status provides.
Now is the time to post a prayer.
End Of Lesson
Study to show thyself approved (mature) unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing (studying/discerning), the Word of truth.
Subscribe Daily Bible Study Mailing List Receive Daily Bible Studies directly into your inbox.
