The Lord God said to the serpent
….I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
Genesis 3.15
The glory and harmony of Eden is no more and that is so tragically obvious as we look around at our world. As we noted yesterday the closing words of Genesis 2 tell us that Adam and Eve were not ashamed. What a contrast with today where shame is everywhere as people (we) seek to hide the things we don’t want others to know about ourselves because we are ashamed! But what perhaps is even more concerning is that many are ‘shameless’ flaunting themselves as Lamech did in Genesis 4.23-24 – but that is to jump ahead for first we need to remind ourselves as to how this came about.
The early chapters of Genesis are dismissed by many as being ‘fairy stories’ but without the understanding they give us we cannot make sense of our world.
We know the story well. The serpent persuaded Adam and Eve that God was a liar (3.2), that effectively God was holding back the best (3.5) and appealed to their pride (3.6).
Eve fell for the serpents lies, Adam did nothing to dissuade her from her course of action so with her was equally guilty (note that men!) and the tragic result was ‘shame’ (3.7) and hiding from God (3.8).
Mankind has lived with the consequences ever since but has also lived with the promise of v.15. The OT shows us a longing for its fulfilment (although many lost sight of it) but post-Christmas and Calvary we can rejoice that the end is in sight and that Satan is in his death throes. Still at work but his final end is fixed.
As we reflect on this chapter let us not fail to marvel that God is a God of grace and mercy in that he has made a way, through the infinitely costly death of his Son, by which we can be brought back into shameless (in the positive sense of the word) relationship with our Creator.