Genesis 3:23-24. 23therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
When Adam and Eve sinned they tried to hide from God. But God didn’t try to hide from them, he came looking for them among the trees. But unlike Genesis 1, God would not be declaring blessings over them, he would be declaring curses over them and all creation. We call this the Fall. From now on life will be full of sin and sadness. Things won’t always work like they are supposed to. Before the curse, if a farmer planted seeds his crops would grow. But now if a farmer plants seeds his crops might not grow. Insects, drought, diseases, freezing, fires, storms, all kinds of bad things can happen and keep the crops from growing. That’s the curse.
And we are also cursed. We are full of sin and selfishness and so is everybody else. That means that things won’t always go the way God intended. For example, you can really nice to someone and they might still be mean back to you. You can show kindness to someone who rejects it and treats you unkind. Can you think of other examples of the curse?
The curse is God’s judgment on all of creation, including Adam and Eve. Look at our verses for today. God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden as a punishment for their sin. They were supposed to be the king and queen of Eden, the priests in God’s garden temple, but they rejected God and rebelled against him. So naturally, God has to kick them out.
But the curse is also God’s kindness and love. Remember, God is love, so everything he does he does from love. Even when God punishes us or curses us, it is because he loves us. How can a curse be loving? Well, when you curse someone it probably isn’t loving at all, because you are a sinner. But God is not a sinner, so his curse is meant for our good.
Think about it: Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world with everything they would need, including knowing God himself. They had no limits except one: don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge. And even in this perfect place they still chose to sin. They chose to reject God’s grace ad love. They chose to not trust God.
How should God fix this? By making the world even more perfect? More good? Well, that would be impossible. The only way to fix it is by making the world less good. Less easy. Less predictable. God knew that only if he breaks the world can he fix us. Because only in a broken world, a cursed world, will we learn to run to God for all that we need. Until we are perfect, we have to live in an imperfect world, or we will never learn to trust God and depend on him.
How do we know that we can trust God? Because God sent Jesus to take the curse on himself when he died on the cross for us. The Bible says that Jesus “became the curse” for us. On the cross, Jesus was cursed (punished) by God so that we would not have to be cursed forever. In fact, when you trust in Jesus to save you, you are no longer cursed, you are blessed! We can change today’s title to “I WAS cursed.”
Of course, you still live in a cursed world. That’s why life can still be really hard, even with Jesus. But with Jesus we are no longer condemned or cursed. Instead we have all the same blessings that he has – God’s love and honor, eternal life and unending love, and a home in Heaven waiting for us where we will live with God and each other forever and ever.
Questions: Go outside. Where can you see the results of the curse in nature? Where can you see the results of the curse in your own heart? How does trusting in Jesus and receiving his blessings allow you to trust God even in a cursed world.
TLICfamily 