Covenant Curses and Blessings

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Covenant Framework of Blessings and Curses

Well I had you turn in Genesis chapter 3. I want you to keep a finger there, but I'm going to take us somewhere else as well before we get to Genesis chapter 3. And before I take us anywhere else in the text of Scripture, I want to take us to a place in the world.

If you were to board an airplane this afternoon and catch a flight to the Middle East, in the direction of the Middle East, if I were to put you on the right seat on the right plane, within a mere 24 hours, you would be able to find yourself, not only on the other side of the world, but in this instance, on the western edge of the nation of Israel, in the city of Tel Aviv.

And upon arriving at the airport, if I were to load you into a car and ship you at least another hour's drive away, we would go northeast of the airport and find ourselves in a small city named Nablus in West Bank.

That's assuming we can cross borders and other things like that. Now to many, it is not a city of much significance at all. It's nestled in a valley in the barren wilderness some 50 kilometers north of Jerusalem.

It has a modest population of only about 120 ,000 people or so. And its economy is equally humble. The main or the most special export out of that city is a special kind of soap that is made with virgin olive oil.

And after that, it's known only for the busy street markets and then it's relatively less so for its unemployment and for its economic troubles. Yet if we were to go to the city of Nablus, a place you've probably never heard of before in your lives, and I were to take you to the center of the city, to a high spot in the city so that you could see the surroundings, you would have a vantage point at one of the most important landscapes in all of the Old Testament.

What you would see if you were to stand there in the city of Nablus, imagine this with me, and look to the north, is the slopes that lead up to the top of Mount Ebal. And then to the south, the rocky crags on the edge of Mount Gerizim.

And if you were especially well-versed in history, you would then recall that you were standing in one of the oldest cities in the ancient world, the ancient city that used to be called Shechem, if you remember that from your Bibles.

And the biblical significance of this particular place cannot be overstated. In Deuteronomy chapter 27, I said I was going to take us somewhere. With one finger in Genesis 3, turn with me there to Deuteronomy 27.

As Moses stood before the nation of Israel, just before they were about to cross the river to inherit the promised land, Moses commanded the people that upon crossing that river, once they entered in, they were to make a full stop at this place in ancient Shechem.

There, on the edge of Mount Ebal, they were to construct an unhewn altar, meaning no carved stones, rough stones, an altar of stone. And there they were to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord their God.

But that wasn't all. Once this altar was constructed, they were to write all of the words of the law on that stone altar. Then, after that was done, and only once that was done, roughly half of the nation, six of the tribes of Israel, approximately one million people were to ascend Mount Ebal.

The other one million or so from the remainder of the nation were to cross the valley and then ascend up to Mount Gerizim, in this place where there is a perfect natural amphitheater, according to God's providence, no doubt.

The Levites then were to read in a loud voice the words of the covenant blessings and the covenant curses that were to be upon the nation of Israel. You see, God had called this nation to himself, as you are well aware, through the man Abraham.

He delivered them after hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt. He preserved them for 40 years, an entire generation, in the wilderness, feeding them manna, enabling them to walk without their shoes wearing out.

He made a covenant with them. He gave his law to them and now, having given them his perfect law, here on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, he demanded of them covenant fidelity. So once they were to enter into this land and enjoy this foretaste of God's own covenant faithfulness, they were to hear, broadcasted in this valley, all that the Lord had for them, either for good or for bad.

Now in chapter 28, if you look there with me, you'll see that if they were obedient, they would enjoy all of the covenant blessings of Mount Gerizim. To name only a few that are listed there. We see that they would enjoy fruitfulness and prosperity, that they would have full bread baskets and brimming barns, abounding livestock, military success and peace, big families, who amongst us wouldn't want this, big families with healthy children and a special status as God's own holy people.

These were the promises that were available to those who kept covenant with their God. And yet, we see partway through chapter 28 that there's another half to that, but that if they were disobedient, they would inherit the covenant curses of Mount Ebal, namely barrenness and poverty, frustration and fever, wasting disease, drought and dust, blight and mildew, locusts, boils, tumors, scabs, rashes, military defeats and subjugation, madness, blindness, confusion of mind, horror and ultimately destruction.

Now, just for a moment, if we're here in Nablus, now, not only having traveled there, let's travel back in time. Imagine for a moment if you were one of those 2 million people some 3 ,600 years ago, looking down into the valley where Nablus now stands and picture this dramatic scene with me.

In that great throng, imagine that you are standing among the group on Mount Ebal, that mount of curses. How sobering it would have been to hear the Levites proclaim not only those 14 verses of blessing for covenant faithfulness, but those 53 verses, nearly four times as many covenant curses.

And all the while, as you're listening to this read out, the words of Moses from Deuteronomy chapter 30 and verse 19, part of that instruction from Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim are ringing out in your ears.

Deuteronomy 30, 19, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring may live. In that moment, if you were standing there, you would have an overwhelming appreciation for not only the kindness of God and not only the severity of God, but the importance of covenant with God.

Now, why am I recounting this story? When God deals with his people, one of the basic principles of his dealings is that he always relates to his people through covenant. When God deals with his people, we see time and time again, in the New Testament, at the coming of Christ, he relates to us, with us, by covenant.

In the Old Testament, in the lives of men like David and Abraham and Noah, we see covenant. We see covenant blessings, things like land and descendants and prosperity and life or like the scene on Mount Ebal, the dire curses of covenant unfaithfulness like exile and sickness and death.

But many of us, why this long-winded introduction? Many of us live as if covenants and as if blessings and curses that accompany them are a thing of the past. We read accounts like this on the slopes of Mount Ebal and I see it in some of your faces.

We read it, we hear it and we are curious, we are interested in it, but we think that it is ultimately of no consequence in our lives. But I ask you, is this really the case? Or is it possible that in our godless, nearly covenantless society, this category of covenants has been removed from our thinking and could it be the case that our thinking about God and His dealings with us are greatly impoverished because of our failure to see God's covenants in God's Word?

I will tell you point blank that most Christians today have a truncated view of God and of the Bible because they do not understand God's covenants. These covenants, though they form the very backbone of the biblical narrative, are lost almost entirely in the mind of the Christian today.

Perhaps you are one of them and as a result, you do not stand in awe of God, sobered both by His severity towards sin and the undeserved covenant kindness that He shows you in Jesus Christ. And we have talked about sin at great length over these last couple of weeks.

We are going to talk about sin at least one more time. But not so much emphasizing sin this week, but emphasizing the curses and the blessings of covenant. This week as we study in Genesis chapter 3, we can turn back there again.

We come to a place where Adam and Eve receive the pronouncement of their covenant curse for their sin in the garden. And here we learn about the very real curses that they received after their fall. Not unlike the curses pronounced on Mount Ebal, these curses brought and still bring hardship and suffering, difficulty and death in the world.

And we live, whether we believe it or not, whether we understand it or not, still in the wake of those covenant curses. Yet even, we will see, as God pronounces these curses, we find something astounding.

Like a small seed. Some of you will remember the great fire that happened in Jasper this year. Like a small seed that breaks forth out of the forest floor after a devastating fire and that brings new life in this barren landscape of God's overwhelming curses.

We will see in Genesis chapter 3 the introduction of a new covenant promise of grace to God's people. So that as a result, and this is the big idea of today's sermon, this text prepares us to live in light of these two intersecting covenants.

The violated covenant of works in the garden along with its curses and the glorious covenant of God's grace with its blessings that come to us ultimately through Jesus Christ.

Now,.

I hope that doesn't sound too complicated. For those of you who wonder from time to time, I feel like I'm getting milk. I feel like I'm getting porridge. I feel like I'm getting cereal. When do I get the meat?

Well, today we get the meat. Really the meat of God's word. Not a little steak but a 32 ounce prime rib steak. And what I've sought to do now is to cut it up into bite size and digestible pieces. So please track with me.

Do not write this off. But today we're going to look at what emerges very naturally as three points in the text that deal with God's covenant curses as they are seen plain as day along with blessings like little seeds that are bound up in each of those curses.

So let's look for ourselves in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 14. And we'll begin by looking this is the name of my first point the serpent's curse. The very first one to be cursed in the garden was the serpent.

And we read about it in verses 14 and 15. The Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now if you remember back to last week you will recall that after the fall God came to Adam and Eve in the garden looking for them and upon finding them in hiding he approached them in the order of their accountability.

First man and then woman. And going to the man as the head of his wife he went with a gentle question. Do you remember that? The kindness of God not in coming with a sentence but in coming with a question.

And posing that question to Adam we saw how Adam deflected that question to his wife and then the Lord again coming gently, patiently, kindly comes to the woman with a question. A tender question posed to her.

And then when Eve shifted the blame in truth she told the Lord God that Satan had deceived her. Now we come in verse 14 to the Lord God's interaction with the serpent. Now if you were listening all last week going Shane, does asking a question really indicate gentleness?

Does it really indicate a level of patience and kindness toward Adam and Eve? I want you to look at the way that he directs his attention at Satan the serpent in verse 14. In verse 14 he does not come with a question.

He does not come with a patient inquiry but God Almighty comes to Satan with an immediate pronouncement of condemnation and a curse. He says because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock.

Now this point someone might ask and it's a fair question what even is a curse? To define it in the most simple of terms, a biblical curse is the exact opposite of a blessing. Rather than the promise of a good thing it is the promise of misery and misfortune.

It is an invocation of God's judgment where the certainty of this judgment and it's accompanying affliction is completely guaranteed. And here we see the nature of this curse experienced by the serpent.

In contrast to the livestock and to the beasts of the field who could walk and graze, this serpent would be made to slither on its belly all the days of its life. Now some have argued up to this or on this point that the serpent up to this point had legs.

Some men like John MacArthur would say that prior to this condemnation and curse that the serpent you could find it, maybe it had four legs maybe it had a hundred legs, but it had legs and it could crawl.

Now there are others who would argue against that. I think that if we were to wade into it, it would be very interesting but it would only be mere speculation at best. But one of the things that I think is most important about the serpent going on its belly is this.

That it was made to be the lowest of all creatures. R .C. Sproul as he comments on it, he says that it was made to eat the dust all the days of its life and this is symbolic of its abject humiliation of an indignity that lasts forever.

And this is not simply the case where a subset of reptiles catches the curse on Satan's behalf and then Satan gets away as if somehow the serpent were to propitiate that curse. But it speaks to Satan's status in creation.

That Satan upon the uttering of this curse not only was the tempter of men and the very means by which sin entered the world but he became the lowest of all creatures. Where he was once one of the most beautiful angels, perhaps the most beautiful angel in all of God's creation.

He now became the most odious and repulsive creature imaginable. And his place is not one though he sought to exalt himself not one of exaltation but of dishonor and of disgrace. And what we often find as this serpent comes and eats the dust of the ground that this mention of dust is representative of judgment throughout the Bible.

Often times when we find this idea of dust it's encountered in the context of repentance and humiliation or in judgment. When God delivered the nation of Israel prior to the exodus from Egypt he judged them with swarming gnats that came from the dust.

When Israel's golden calf was discovered it was ground down into dust. The nation of Babylon, Isaiah prophesied would be made to sit in the dust even as the Lord Jesus Christ sent his disciples into the cities and the towns to proclaim the gospel when they did not receive him.

Then what were they to do but to sweep the dust off their feet as a sign of their judgment. Even on Mount Ebal if we were to use that as an example in Deuteronomy 28 verse 24 we see the curse of dust for covenant unfaithfulness.

There it says the Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed. Now I want you to recognize what we are seeing here before us. Why does God dish out these curses rather than simply deliver Satan over to swift destruction?

Wouldn't that make sense? Here you have Satan the very tempter of mankind, the originator of sin itself in the world. Why not strike him dead and move on? Why the curses? Just as we saw warned on Mount Ebal, what amounted to thousands of years later, what we are seeing here is not the final judgment of God but a preliminary form of judgment resulting from covenant disobedience in the garden.

Covenant disobedience, an exaction, a pronouncement of covenant curse. If we were to look into Genesis chapter 2 and verse 15 we would actually see that here in Genesis 2 we find the building blocks of covenant.

There we read that the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. We're familiar with that much. Then in verse 6 the Lord God commanded the man saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Now some have looked at this and said there's no covenant here. I don't see any language of covenant. Show me the word covenant and I will believe it is a covenant. But I'm going to give you three reasons why in fact we are seeing the outcome of covenant unfaithfulness and proof that there was indeed a covenant between God.

And Adam.

Speaking on this verse Richard Barcellas he notes that here we see everything that we would expect to find in a covenant. He defines a covenant for those of you who are wondering what it even is as a divinely sanctioned relationship.

A relationship that God himself designs between God and man. And Barcellas points out that the five elements of a biblical covenant are here present in Genesis chapter 2. For one we see that God sovereignly imposes this sanctioned relationship.

That here God who created man dictates the parameters of this relationship. Number two we see covenant representation. We read later in the New Testament about how all those in Adam die. What does that mean?

That Adam himself was our federal head, a covenant head between God and man.

The third.

Aspect that we see is that there is a conditional element. And that being the obedience of man. The conditions of this covenant were conditioned on man's.

Obedience.

There's a penalty for disobedience being death and a reward for obedience being life that comes from eating from the tree of life. Now if that isn't enough some have suggested that God's covenant with Noah is in fact the first covenant that we find between God and man in the Bible.

But is that in fact the case? If we were to go forward a little bit more to Genesis chapter 6 and verse 18, if you look there with me for a moment what does it say there with respect to the covenant? God says, but I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons your wife and your son's wife with you.

In chapter 9 verse 9 we see that same language again. The establishment of a covenant. Now what does that mean? It's actually very important language that the establishment of a covenant does not mean that a new covenant is made but that an old covenant is being confirmed.

In the Hebrew language it uses the expression hakim barit. We don't need to know how to spell that or pronounce it but what it means is that here we see the confirmation of a covenant rather than a covenant that is initiated or as they used to say to cut a covenant.

And so here as God deals with Noah he is saying I am not making a new covenant with you but merely establishing confirming the covenant that was already made with your father Adam. It's simply a continuation of the first covenant with Adam.

And so the first covenant in human history is not that made with Noah but that made with Adam. But then even more than that, if you want explicit language, show me one place where the Bible says that there was a covenant with Adam.

I'll take you to Hosea chapter 6 verse 7. And there in Hosea as he is bringing charges against God's people he says, but like Adam they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with me.

Now theologians have come to call this the Adamic covenant but because it extends even beyond Adam as we will see it also has become known as the covenant of works at least within the covenant theology framework because it was and is a covenant promising life that is contingent upon man's works of disobedience or sorry, man's works of obedience.

That if you.

Obey then you.

Have life. If you work at righteousness then all will be well with you but if not, death. And thus we find this covenant curse in Genesis chapter 3 and this curse upon the serpent is not limited to Satan only but affects all of us as well.

Verse 15 explains that this curse would create enmity between Satan and man. Between Satan and the woman. Between Satan and her offspring. And I want to pose a few questions to you. Why is in Scripture Satan likened to a roaring lion who is ready to devour and destroy your soul?

Why is Satan like that in his interactions in his ambitions towards us? Why let me ask you does the world love darkness and hate light? Why did the world persecute our Lord and now seeks to persecute us?

Is it because God made the world this way?

Well of course.

The answer is no. Then why? What is the cause for this enmity in the world? This is a result of the covenant curse that was first uttered in the garden of Eden. Matthew Henry, that famous Bible commentator, he says about this passage in Genesis 3 15.

He says, war is proclaimed between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It is the fruit of this enmity that there is continual warfare between grace and corruption in the hearts of God's people.

Satan by their corruptions buffets them, sifts them, and seeks to devour them. Heaven and hell can never be reconciled, nor light and darkness. No man sorry, no more can Satan and his sanctified soul.

Also there is a continual struggle between the wicked and the godly in this world. Now think again, if I were to bring us to Mount Ebal one more time, looking into the valley, hearing those covenant curses, many of them echoing what we see in the curses here in the garden.

With what fear and trepidation you would stand there and think, oh that we would never ever, ever, ever, ever violate this covenant that these curses would come upon us.

And yet.

I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters the reason why you struggle in this world with sin. The reason why you experience hardship. The reason why we experience persecution. The reason why we are at war with evil and with Satan himself at every moment is because we live now in this cursed world as a result of covenant unfaithfulness in the garden.

Adam and Eve at one time had two paths that were before them. They had at that time in an uncorrupted state the ability to choose left or right. To choose life and peace forever.

More. Or to.

Choose death and disorder. And Adam responsible as our covenant head chose death and disorder. Therefore we live in a world of enmity.

If you want.

To know why our Lord Jesus Christ is maligned in the world today, it is because of Genesis chapter 3. If you want to know why you like our Lord Jesus Christ are maligned in the world today, I point you no further than Genesis chapter 3.

If you want to know why the gospel.

Is.

Detested and denied and disobeyed and dishonored look no further than Genesis chapter 3. If you want to know why it seems as though sin and Satan are always biting at your heels look no further than Genesis chapter 3.

Earlier today I took us to Nablus. Let me take us, we're going a whole bunch of different places today. Let me take us to North Korea. To one of their internment prisons where they imprison Christians not for murder, not for rape, not for robbery but for their Christian faith.

And there as they are in those cells alone, brothers and sisters we are sitting here in freedom with our Bibles on our laps. As they sit there alone, many of them, who knows maybe it has been years or decades without the word of God to nourish their souls.

Why are they there? Because of the evils of sin and the consequences of that sin. Because of covenant curses. Because of the cursed nature in this world. And when they do not recant, and when they do not deny the Lord Jesus Christ and they are placed on sidewalks and overrun by paving machines why is it?

It is because of sin. Because of the same covenant curses that we experience. When our brothers and sisters in Christ are killed by their own family members in Pakistan.

Why.

Is it?

We need look no further than Genesis chapter 3. Brethren, some of you will ask why all the hoopla about covenants? Why are you making such a big deal of God's covenants? Because when there is covenant unfaithfulness we see consequences like this.

Because this enmity that we experience every single day of our lives is a result of covenant unfaithfulness. That sin is real and the effects of sin are real and they're real in this accursed world in which we live.

Hopefully by now over these last number of weeks we have learned just how destructive and how evil and how deadly and how brutal sin is. So that when we are tempted by it, it is the very last thing that we would ever want near to us.

And yet in Genesis 3 as we look at verses 14 and 15 though Adam and Eve were in the garden and were given a covenant of works righteousness and though they fell from that covenant in the midst of these curses that we see leveled upon Satan and that overflow to us upon the black backdrop of this wickedness and corruption we find, I want you to see it with me, a single pinprick of light coming through.

At the tail end of verse 15 we get a glimpse of God's gracious plan for humanity. Out of this enmity with Satan, an offspring we are told would come from the woman who would contend with the serpent. And though the serpent would bruise his heel, this offspring would bruise its head.

That Hebrew word for bruise can be translated as crush. And what this tells us is that God, even before he addresses the punishment of the man and woman, has already prepared a savior for them.

One who would.

Come in human flesh as an offspring of the woman. Incarnate. One who being bit by the serpent would suffer to rescue man. And yet this one who was bit by the serpent in the flesh would reign victorious over the powers of sin and death.

Now theologians have a fantastic word for Genesis or an expression for Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. It's been widely called the Proto-Evangelion. Now most of you don't necessarily understand Greek but proto is first or a variation of first and evangelion or euangelion is gospel.

But here in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15 in the midst of this curse is the first gospel. Because in it we have a portrait of the one who would usher in a new covenant not of works but of grace. The great serpent crusher.

The Lord Jesus Christ. One commentator says no sooner was the wound given than the remedy was provided and revealed. The gracious revelation of a savior came unasked and unlooked for. By faith in this promise our first parents and the patriarchs were justified and saved.

And so here we have this covenant curse followed by included with this covenant promise. The promise of Jesus Christ. Not in Matthew, not in Isaiah, not in 2 Samuel but in Genesis chapter 3 that though we are great sinners there is a great savior coming.

The Woman’s Curse and the Promise of Childbearing

But there's more. This is my longest point just so you know. This last point because I had to establish the premise of covenant. The next two are much quicker. Our second point is this. The woman's curse.

In verse 16. To the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband but he shall rule over you. Working now in this reverse order we've seen that the curse of the serpent, now the curse of the woman God next pronounces two curses upon the woman that will lead to sisters.

I want you to hear this wives, mothers curses that will lead to tremendous domestic frustrations that will impact her two primary roles in life. That as this curse comes it doesn't come after our recreation.

The effects of sin in our life they don't affect the fringes of our lives. As if the fringe of our garments but they affect the center and the very core of our existence as men and women.

In the world. The first.

Curse is this that it will multiply the pain that she experiences in childbearing. And then the second curse that it will bring marital strife.

Now.

If you've not seen this curse in effect in action in your lives or in the lives of people around you I have to conclude that you've been living under a rock. Some of the biggest difficulties that we experience in marriage and family are an outcome of the curse.

Scripture itself testifies that childbearing now mingles this mix of great pain and difficulty. The pain of giving birth to a child which is then forgotten with the blessing and the joy of the birth of that child.

Hear this with me sisters that sin affects the very thing that makes you as a woman a woman. It affects your ability to bear children. In fact it is such a significant curse that now one of the main things that your body has been designed to do aside from know God and glorify Him is now one of the most painful things in the human experience to give birth to a child.

And then meanwhile in addition to that last week I noted that the very first marital conflict that was experienced came only after Adam and Eve's fall in the garden. So under this curse that marital conflict as Adam points to Eve and says Lord it was this woman that you gave me that becomes the very first of a lifetime of battles between the sexes in the marriage relationship.

So the curse not only affects what makes a woman a woman but it frustrates her most important relationship in her life at least human relationship the relationship that she is to enjoy with her husband.

John McArthur says in this he says sin has turned the harmonious system of God ordained roles into distasteful struggles of self will. And don't you know that every time you see that reared up that ugly head reared up in your life it is an effect it is a consequence of sin.

And so I ask you how important is covenant really? Dear sisters, mothers, expectant mothers and experienced mothers every pain in child bearing is a result of the fall. Every miscarriage for those of you who have experienced the sadness the devastating effects of a miscarriage this too is an outcome of.

The curse.

Those of you sisters who are not yet not yet had children you don't know about this necessarily yet but you will when you're woken up in the middle of the night with heartburn and you're uncomfortable in every possible position.

That too is in effect a consequence of the curse and the fall. Sin is heinous and vile. It shows us that.

God is real.

That sin is evil and that God keeps his covenants even his curses. Yet even in this curse we find a second pinprick of light.

That this.

Child rearing would ultimately point to we just came through Christmas and everyone is celebrating baby Jesus would would point to that baby Jesus Christ that incarnate Lord that incarnate God man. As one commentator writes pain is experienced even at the point of great fulfillment for the woman the birth of her children.

Nevertheless in her role of bearing and raising children a promise in Jesus Christ the woman is privileged to participate in God's plan to create a people for himself. In 1st Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15 people read that verse.

And they wonder what in the world does this mean. Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness and self-control. It points primarily to the giving of the son as through the womb of the woman but in addition to that the carrying out of the woman's function in the world in Christ.