#DailyDevotion The Threat Of God Is Fulfilled
Gen. 314Then the LORD God said to the snake, “Because you did this, cursed are you among all the animals, tame and wild. You will crawl on your belly and eat dirt all your life. 15And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your descendants and her Descendant. He will crush your head, and you will bruise His heel.” 16To the woman He said, “I will give you much trouble when you’re pregnant, and in pain you will give birth to children. You will long for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17To the man He said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate some fruit of the tree when I ordered you, ‘Don’t eat of it,’ cursed is the ground on account of you. Weary from work you will eat your food as long as you live. 18The ground will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants in the field. 19In the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you go back to the ground, because you were taken from it. You are dust and will turn back to dust.” 20The man called his wife Eve [Life] because she became the mother of every living person. 21The LORD God made tunics from skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.
Taking those blamed in reverse, the LORD starts telling each what is going to happen to them because of their sin. The snake is cursed among all the animals and must crawl on its belly now. The woman will have increased trouble in pregnancy and the relationship with her husband is not what it was. The man will now have increased trouble in growing things and work will be toilsome now. They will return to the dust from which they were made. We see the effects of these results even done to today as their children born in their image and likeness.
Taking those blamed in reverse, the LORD starts telling each what is going to happen to them because of their sin. The snake is cursed among all the animals and must crawl on its belly now. The woman will have increased trouble in pregnancy and the relationship with her husband is not what it was. The man will now have increased trouble in growing things and work will be toilsome now. They will return to the dust from which they were made. We see the effects of these results even done to today as their children born in their image and likeness.
Ironically or perhaps trying to making something good out of a bad situation, Adam calls the woman Eve because she became the mother of every living person. It’s ironic because what she gives birth to are not living persons, but living dead persons. That is, those born into this world don’t have the life of God in them. They are conceived in sin, every inclination of their hearts is wicked from birth and will not and cannot accept the things of God. Yet the LORD gave us something in the Garden to give life to our hearts, a promise in the form of a threat.
In verse 15 the LORD speaks a threat to the serpent which is good news for us. Eve understood it as good news when she mistakenly names her firstborn Cain. She thought he was the LORD, the promised head crusher. The Woman is to give birth to one who will crush the head of the serpent, the devil while the devil strikes his heels, killing him.
Yet the Woman whose seed crushes the head of the serpent does come and has come. That Woman is Mary. Without the seed of a man, the LORD conceives in her himself. As the LORD made a woman from the rib of a man, now he makes a man from the seed of a woman. He joins himself to her flesh and becomes man. As Paul writes in Gal. 4:4 “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5to free those under the Law and make us His sons.” Yes, Jesus the LORD, the Son of God, became one us to free us from the curse and make us God’s children andcame to restore the life that was in us, his life. Jesus says in John 6 “anyone who believes has everlasting life.” Mary in effect becomes the mother of the living because it is her son Jesus who gives the life of God to mankind through faith in him.
Almighty God and Father, you made and fulfilled your promise of overcoming Satan through the seed of the Woman, Jesus, your Son. Grant that we may have faith in him and receive eternal life through him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.