June 19 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Genesis 3:15-21

¹⁵And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
¹⁶Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
¹⁷And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
¹⁸Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
¹⁹In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
²⁰And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
²¹Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

Devotional

God had said that Adam and Eve would die if they ate the fruit. They did not at that moment cease from their physical existence. What did God mean?

Along with the rest of creation, the bodies of Adam and Eve would now be feeling the encroachment of death. They would be experiencing the frailties of the flesh, the disease and weakness that would finally overtake them. This is one of the things that God meant.

But God also meant that they would die spiritually. No longer would they have the same quality of life that had enabled them to have fellowship with God. No longer would they have the deepest fellowship with each other. Now the woman would be, not a helper, but a self-asserting subject, or, at best, something less than a gentle, co-operative follower. In his sin the husband would not, at best, be a completely benign leader. He might be a despot. Or, on the other hand, he might be spineless, abdicating his responsibility. Life as God had designed it would be out of the reach of man.

No longer, either, would the man have the simple task of caring for a fully responsive garden. His task as family head would be complicated by a ground cursed with thorns and thistles. And the woman's joy in bringing forth children would be dulled as her conceptions would be multiplied and the process of birth would be accompanied by pain and distress.

How good of God, in the midst of this blow to the first man and woman, to promise relief! Genesis 3:15 is the first announcement of deliverance in the form of a Saviour. Even here, when God had every right to send immediate destruction because of man's disobedience, He manifested His grace. Now the thread of Messianic prophecy, a thread red as the Saviours blood, is fastened into the tapestry of written revelation. And we can follow it through to the last page of Scripture. What a gracious God is ours!