7. By the Sweat of Your Face
- Jadon Kessler
- Jul 14, 2023
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 30, 2023
"Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face You will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” - Genesis 3:17-19
Introduction
Our actions have consequences. When you hit a golf ball with a club, the consequence that follows is the ball being launched down the fairway. The things we do in this life have results that come from it. You sign mortgage paperwork, and you get a house as a result; you say "I do" in the sight of God, and you get a spouse as a result. Every action has a consequence, for good or ill.
"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life" - Galatians 6:7-8
When Adam sinned against the Lord, grave consequences followed. Man was alienated from God and was driven away from His presence; all of his being and his offspring were corrupted and given over to depravity. On top of that, the Lord dealt out specific curses to His creation. The serpent who deceived the woman was cursed more than every beast of the field and forced to crawl upon his belly and eat dust (Gen 3:14).
The woman who ate and gave to her husband was cursed with pain in childbirth (Gen 3:16; this topic will be discussed in another blog post). Then for man, whom was given the breath of life, the ground was cursed. That might be surprising to you when you read that. The serpent sinned and was cursed, the woman sinned and was cursed, but when man sinned, the ground was cursed? That seems unjust to us, it seems as though Adam got away with his sin, and the innocent ground was cursed in his stead. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Adam did not get away with his sin; God's curse on the ground was intentional and truly punishes Adam and his sons. Let us look closer at the curse God proclaimed on the ground that man worked.
A Burdensome Mission
As we start to consider the curse we need to see the connection between the curse and man's mission. When God created man, He gave him the job of taking dominion and subduing the earth. It has been appointed to men to rule over all creation. Adam was king under God like Joseph ruled Egypt under Pharaoh. That is why when Adam sinned, all of humanity fell with him, and why Adam was held responsible and not Eve. God even draws attention to this when declaring the curse:
"Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’ - Genesis 3:17
Adam was the head of Eve. It was his responsibility to lead and protect her but instead, he left her vulnerable and threw upon her responsibility she was never designed to have. Adam failed God, the woman he was given, and the creation he was to rule; all because of his cowardice.
God would have been well within His right to remove this worthless steward from his place of authority over all creation, and yet He did not. The Lord kept the man that He designed to rule in his place of authority. This does not mean that the Lord let the man go completely unpunished. In order to keep Man in his place as ruler and still administer justice, the Lord made Man's mission to take dominion difficult. To effectively curse a ruler you give him riotous subjects.
"Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" - Genesis 3:17
Adam still was responsible for taking dominion of earth but now that job was burdensome. He now had to work the ground in sweat, blood, blisters, splinters, and fatigue. The ground now produced thorns to hinder the work of dominion (Gen 3:18); the animals became violent against him. The glorious creation that once blessed him now was hostile towards him.
The Struggle of Survival
Not only was this curse on the ground burdensome to Adam's mission, but it also made day-to-day survival painful. In order to even eat, there is toil in farming, gardening, or hunting. We have to build a shelter to hide from the bitter elements. Every day Adam had to labor just to survive. This is something we in America easily take for granted; we have so much luxury and ease. But even we, who have more food than we know what to do with, still feel the sting of the curse. For if we do not work, we will not have the funds to buy food or shelter and will find ourselves homeless in which case we will have to work much harder to survive.
To add to the hardship of Adam's survival he had to provide for Eve and his children. As the man, you do not work so only you can eat, you have to work so that your wife and children can eat also. Their lives are your responsibility. Your wife and children are weaker, you must take on greater toil to ease their burdens.
Adam had to fight for his survival and the survival of his family, a fight that he would ultimately lose.
"Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return" - Genesis 3:19
No matter how much he labored, Adam still died along with each of his offspring. We fight to take dominion of this earth, wrestle with it to satisfy our hunger, and at the end of the day, each one of us is overcome by the ground. That is the irony of the curse, we are subdued by the ground we were supposed to subdue. When we breathe our last, we are swallowed up by the ground and absorbed into the ground.
Washed Clean
This curse on us and our children is great. No matter how much we struggle and toil, our strength will eventually fail us. So what are we to do? There are three responses we can have to this curse. One, we can fight the system and work the ground with all our might in the vain hope that we might cheat death and not return to dust. Two, we can squander our strength in the pursuit of cheap and easy pleasures; in other words eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Or there is a third option: cry out to God. Remember the curse is only the result of sin, sin is truly what leaves us in ruins.
"For the wages of sin is death" - Romans 6:23
Because of our sin, we have earned for ourselves the curse which results in death. We are all conquered and unable to free ourselves from our bondage. That was until the Son of God, through whom all things were created (Col 1:16-17), entered into our frail frame. Jesus became a man just like you and I and felt the full effects of the curse. He died and was buried, but He did not turn to dust. He rose from the dead and triumphed over sin and death. Christ has won salvation; He has taken away the sting of death and now comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found. Beloved, the curse runs deep, we are infected with death; come let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross and let His blood wash over us to make us clean and free from bondage.
"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ" - Romans 5:12-17
The Pains of Childbirth
At this point, you might be thinking, "If we are free from sin because of Christ, why then do we still suffer from the curse?" Beloved, I do not say to you that the consequences of the curse go away when we are saved. We still must work the ground that God cursed, our bodies still return to dust. Yet I say to you that Christ is the conqueror of death and gives rest and eternal life. How can this be?
"But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death" - 1 Corinthians 15:20-26
We at this time only experience the first fruits of eternal life. Christ has been raised from the dead; we rejoice in His resurrection and have been freed from the condemnation of sin. However we still anxiously await to be set free from these earth bodies of decay.
"For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body" - Romans 8:22-23
We suffer and toil under the curse, but we do not strive in futility. We are like a woman in labor, who but for a moment suffers and then after that enters into joy so great that she forgets her suffering altogether.
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us" - Romans 8:18
Take courage, for soon we will be rid of the presence of sin. We shall enter into glory beyond glory, we shall be given glorified bodies, free from the chains of the curse, and shall forever rejoice. But until then, we must wait for Christ to put all of His enemies under His feet (1 Cor 15:26).
Save the Languishing
So what do we do in the meantime? We remember our mission. We are still called to take dominion and subdue the earth. And Christ added another element to it when He told us to make disciples of the nations and baptize them (Matt. 28:18-20). Many around us still live under the condemnation of sin and have no hope of being freed from the curse. We need to proclaim to them the hope of Christ and the new life He provides. Those in the world are wasting away: speak to them the words of Christ, the words of eternal life.
Work Cited
New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.
