Genesis 3:14-19
In Genesis 3:14-19, God now pronounces the consequences for Adam and Eve’s disobedience. God had given this couple great privileges, great provision, and great freedom, but Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and rebel against His grace and goodness. Yet, the broken-hearted Father still sought them out in order to restore a relationship with them. However, instead of confession and repentance they shifted the blame and took no personal responsibility for what they had done. As you read this passage of Scripture, it is painfully obvious that there is no confession of their sin, and no acknowledgement of what they have done. God then declared the consequences to Adam and Eve, and to the serpent. It is also very interesting in this text that the Lord pronounces the consequences in the order of their responsibility. God first addressed the serpent, then Eve, and last of all Adam. God said, “So the LORD God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’ To the woman He said: ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return’” (Gen. 3:14-19).
Consequences!
No one likes to experience the consequences for their sin, but consequences are the natural result of disobeying a holy God. We all want to sin, but we don’t want to suffer the consequences of our rebellion against Him. However, that is just not reality. There will always be a consequence for sin! Consequences are what the Bible calls the curse. In fact, the word cursed, is used twice in this section of Scripture, and is used scores of times in the Old and New Testaments. When God pronounces a curse, that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love us. No, the curse is simply the result and reality of our disobedience. But you must remember that God also speaks about His blessings which He wants to bestow upon us, just as He did with Adam and Eve. The Lord contrasts His blessings and curses throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy 30:1-3, Moses declared to the people of Israel, “Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God drives you, and you return to the LORD your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you.” What a powerful prophetic passage this is! God tells His people that the purpose of the blessing and the curse is to help them to remember that they must always return to Him with all their hearts. God confirms to them that He will respond to their cries because of His compassion toward them, and He will gather them back into their land. Are the Jews back in their land today? Yes, they are! Then God has fulfilled His Word again! His compassions fail not, they are new every morning (Lam. 3:21-23).
Blessings!
One of the greatest blessings that God has ever offered mankind is the blessing of forgiveness. So many times, when I counsel people over the consequences of their actions, I encourage them to ask for His forgiveness. Forgiveness will allow God’s blessings to flow toward them again. But I also remind them that forgiveness will not change the consequences. The consequences are corrective, and they are designed to encourage a person to change their way and not go back and sin again. This is the purpose of consequences! Just as the Children of Israel were reminded of God’s compassion, so you will be reminded of His love toward you. This truth is equally true when you correct your own children with consequences when they disobey. If they had no consequences, your children would begin to think that they could do whatever they please. That would be incredibly detrimental for them. If God has consequences, you also should administer consequences to your children. Consequences will lead your children to repentance, forgiveness, a respect for what is morally right, and a respect for you. The same is true with God. In Psalm 130:3-4 David said, “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that you may be feared.” The word feared means to be respected or reverenced. What a glorious thing that there is forgiveness with God! God forgives us, He does not mark our iniquities, and then He gives us the option of coming back into fellowship with Him. What a wonderful thing that anyone can be forgiven of their sins. The Apostle John made this so clear when he wrote, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
The greatest blessing.
The greatest blessing I could ever share with anyone, is the fact that they have been redeemed from the curse that is upon them, and upon all mankind. Paul explained this blessing in Galatians 3:13 where he said, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.” If you are in Christ, this is where you stand today. You are redeemed from God’s curse that is upon mankind! If you are not a Christian, you have still been redeemed, but you cannot access this blessing of redemption unless you come in repentance before God. Repentance is when a person changes their mind about their sin, and agrees with God that their behavior is sinful. A truly repentant sinner will always cry out with sorrow for God’s forgiveness (2 Cor. 7:9-10). Forgiveness and salvation don’t just happen because someone walks into church. You must in humility, personally ask for God’s forgiveness, and receive Christ into your life by faith (John 1:12). If you are reading this and have never surrendered your life to Him, do it now!
The consequences for the serpent. Vs. 14-15
God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Gen. 3:14-15).
The first thing to consider is, why does God begin by speaking to the serpent and pronouncing a curse upon him? The serpent was the ultimate one that was responsible for tempting Eve, and he is the one who provoked this whole process which resulted in the fall of mankind. Satan is the one who had the greater responsibility in causing Adam and Eve to disobey God. He is the tempter, and continues to be the tempter of all mankind. Paul warned the Corinthians about their own temptation with the wicked one when he wrote, “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Satan’s primary mission is to deceive each and every one of us, so we must all be on our guard! Recognizing when you are being tempted is the key to overcoming it. I would refer you to my previous study in this series for a more in-depth look at recognizing temptation.
God declared to the serpent that he was cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field, which means that he and all the other animal life on earth were cursed along with him. The serpent was to experience a lowly existence in the dust, constrained to eat the dust of the earth. This terminology, of eating the dust of the earth, refers to total defeat throughout the Scripture (Micah 7:17).
Today all animal life and all creation are experiencing what the Bible calls, “the bondage of corruption,” which is the decay and death we all experience in life. Paul declared in Romans 8:20-22, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.” Note that Paul teaches that all of creation has been subjected to futility, which means emptiness or vanity, because of the sin of man. Paul declared that God took this action, not willingly, but to actually inspire hope. How could this be? Because as we groan under the burden of the emptiness of this world, we will long for the glorious liberty that is to come. So, when you look at all of the consequences of sin in this world, you will think, I don’t like this world, I am so empty, there must be something better than what I see in front of me. Isn’t that exactly what took place in your life before you came to Christ? It sure was for me. I didn’t like the consequences of my sin, and the mess I had made of my life. I was reaping the consequences of my sin, and I didn’t like it. I had sown to the wind, and I was reaping the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7). But this is when I started looking for answers and solutions to my problems. When I started to look outside of myself for a solution, that’s when I became open to the message of the gospel. I’m glad God has subjected the world to emptiness, because that is what brought me to Him.
On your belly you shall go!
This part of the curse upon the serpent is really interesting when God said, “On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life” (Gen. 3:14). This part of the curse leads you to the conclusion that before the fall of man, most likely the serpent did not slither in the dust of the earth. Did you know that there are some snakes today that can stand up off of the ground? The King Cobra and the Black Mamba can rise up as high as 18 inches off the ground and stand up straight. So, the natural question is: before the fall did snakes have the ability to move upright? Very possibly. If they did not have this ability, what would have been the point of God cursing them to slither in the dust forever, when most other animals either fly or walk on two or four legs? This was a tremendous demotion to the serpent for being used to tempt Eve.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed.
What does this part of the curse mean? To understand this aspect of the curse, you must first determine who is the Seed of the woman, and who is the seed of the serpent? But Satan doesn’t have any physical seed, because he is an angelic being and doesn’t have any physical offspring. How then could he have descendants? Another problem is that the woman has no seed; only the man has the seed. Women have eggs, and the man provides the seed to fertilize the woman’s egg. Whenever you see the term “seed” referred to in the Scripture, it is the seed of a man (Jer. 31:27). Therefore, the terminology used in this text is problematic and difficult to understand. What then is God referring to here?
He must obviously be referring to spiritual descendants, not physical ones. That would mean that those who follow Satan’s rule and authority, are literally his spiritual children, and those who follow the truth of God will be the spiritual seed of the woman. There are several biblical examples given to us in Scripture to prove this interpretation. In Matthew 13:37-39 as Jesus is explaining the parable of the tares He teaches, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.” The sons of the Kingdom are the good seeds, and the sons of the devil are the tares, or seed of the wicked one. I think this parable makes it pretty clear that Jesus is talking about the very struggle between these two groups of people referred to in Genesis 3. Remember also that Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil.” Clearly Jesus believed that the Pharisees were the seed of the serpent. Also, in 1 John 3:10, the apostle declared, “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest; Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.” Again, God’s Word places the seed of the serpent at odds with the children of God just as this prophecy in Genesis predicts.
Who does the Bible teach is the primary seed of the serpent? He is the son of perdition, or the Anti-Christ who is coming. Who is the primary seed of the woman? It is Jesus the Messiah who was born of the virgin Mary. Paul explains these two truths in his epistles. In 2 Thessalonians he refers to the Anti-Christ as the lawless one that is coming at the end of the age just before the Second Coming of Christ. He writes, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thess. 2:7-10). Paul also refers to Christ as the Seed of the woman in his epistle to the Galatians. He wrote, “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). With this understanding let’s look at the next part of the curse upon the serpent.
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.
The “He” that was to bruise the head of the serpent is obviously Christ. The word bruise is a Hebrew word that means to compress and crush. This is what Jesus accomplished at the cross when He died for our sins and rose again, freeing us forever from Satan’s authority over us. But it also says, that the serpent would bruise Christ’s heel. This is an obvious reference to the persecution of Jesus all through His ministry, and ultimately Satan’s plan to destroy Jesus by the crucifixion. But Satan’s plan backfired and played right into the hand of God’s plan to set men free from their sin by His death on the cross.
The promise within the curse!
What is so powerful about this curse upon the serpent, is that within the curse a promise is given to all men of deliverance from the curse of sin. From the descendants of the woman will come forth the Christ, who will set us free from the very dilemma that was created by Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. How gracious is God in this promise to Adam and Eve and to all mankind! This immediate promise to all mankind is a powerful testimony to God’s awesome love. In addition to this promise of redemption, there is also a promise of victory over Satan himself. In Romans 16:20, there is a passage of Scripture that I hope you will see totally different now. Paul declared, “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.” Paul is speaking to Christians in this verse, and promising ultimate victory over Satan. Christ has already crushed the serpents head, which is a reference to Satan’s authority over mankind. This is a finished work of God. You just need to believe this finished work of Christ to experience this victory in your own life. Jesus has won the victory! He will give this victory to those who believe in Him. He will crush Satan under your feet shortly. Scripture does not say He might crush Satan under your feet. No! God declares that He will crush him under your feet! Believe Him to do it today!
The consequences for Eve. Vs. 16
God now turns to the woman who is the next person in the hierarchy of responsibility for the fall of mankind. He declared the consequence for Eve’s disobedience saying, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” The consequence God gives to Eve is very short and to the point. He declared that childbirth would now be painful, and her sorrow will be greatly multiplied. In addition, her desire will be for her husband, and he was to rule over her.
Multiplying sorrow.
Why would God multiply sorrow in conception and give her pain in childbirth? You can understand this consequence in several ways. First, the natural experience of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth is not easy. From the time of conception there is nausea, the loss of a desire for certain foods, dizziness, pains throughout the body, swollen legs and feet, feeling faint, the danger of miscarriage, and a multitude of other distresses and medical issues relating to the carrying of a child to term. Then finally the pain of actually giving birth. Second, with every child born into the world, the result is sorrow multiplied by many billions upon billions of people the world over. Eve has sinned and experienced sorrow, and now she will see her children sin and experience the same sorrow. Among her own first two children, she would experience the sorrow of seeing Cain kill his brother Abel.
God makes this sorrow very personal for Eve, and for every woman, but sorrow is always the consequence of sin. Solomon declared that, “He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow” (Prov. 22:8). All mankind has sown a multitude of sin, and we have all reaped a lot of sorrow. This is the sowing and reaping principle taught throughout the Scripture. Paul declares in the New Testament, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life” (Gal. 6:7-8). The blessing is that once you place your faith in Jesus Christ, and are filled with the Holy Spirit, you can sow to the Spirit and reap everlasting life. This is the blessing of redemption from the curse of sin. But while you are in this life, every time you experience suffering and pain, it is a reminder of the consequences of sin, and what Adam and Eve did. Every time someone dies, it’s a reminder of the curse of sin. However, death should also remind you of someone else who died and rose again as your deliverance.
You must remember that God does not desire that you only experience sorrow of heart. He also wants to give you joy. Jesus made this clear when He used the sorrow of childbirth to illustrate the hope of His coming again. Jesus explained this truth when He taught His disciples about His resurrection. He reminds them of what they would think after His crucifixion when He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (John 16:20-22). This again is the result of redemption, and the promise of real fellowship with the resurrected Jesus. If you are following Jesus, you too will see Him again. May this hope and joy keep you in the midst of the suffering and sorrow of this world.
Your desire will be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you.
This part of Eve’s consequence is much misunderstood today. The Hebrew word for desire means an urge, an impulse, or a longing. But the question is: does this refer to an impulse or longing in a good sense or a bad one? I believe the best way to understand this statement is to see it in the context of what comes after it, and he shall rule over you. This is called a Hebrew antithetic parallelism which places two ideas in contrast to one another. The contrast is the woman’s desire, and her husband’s responsibility to rule over her. Because Eve took the fruit and ate it without any discussion with her husband, the consequence of her sin is that now she must allow her husband to rule over her. In all the years I have done marriage counseling, I have found one of the great struggles is a woman’s sinful challenge to her husband’s role as leader of the home and family. Therefore, her sinful desire will be to have dominion over her husband, but his calling is to rule over her. Another proof to this interpretation, is this same word for desire is used in Genesis 4:7 of the desire of sin to rule over Cain. God warned Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” The usage of this word in this verse, is also an antithetic parallelism.
Another misconception of Eve’s consequences for her sin, is the phrase, and he shall rule over you. I have heard Christian men say to women, “You are the one who got us all into this mess of sin, so you need to just submit and be quiet.” People have taken this particular passage and misused it, and abused women greatly. Women have been manipulated and treated almost like slaves in many countries around the world even to this day. In Muslim countries women have no rights, or in other countries very few rights. Women can’t even drive a car or go out in public by themselves in some nations. For centuries women have been looked at as property, and this was never God’s intention for this verse, or any verse found in the Bible. How can I be so sure of this last statement?
What does the New Testament teach on this topic?
When you read the New Testament, you find verses of Scripture that give balance to this idea of a husband ruling over his wife. Paul clearly agrees with the concept of a woman being in submission to her husband, but in no way does he see women as having no rights, or that they are property. When Paul explains the qualifications for an elder of the church, he teaches that a husband must be, “One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God” (1 Tim. 3:4-5)? The word rule in these two verses mean to manage well his own house. The New American Standard Version of the Bible actually translates this word “rule” as “manage well.” This nullifies this idea that a man is to rule in an autocratic way, as if his wife is some kind of slave. This would be totally contrary to Paul’s teaching for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it (Eph. 5:25). In addition, Paul makes one of the most revolutionary statements in Galatians concerning women in general. He taught, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This statement declaring Jews and Greeks were the same, slaves and free-born individuals were equal, and male and females were all equal in Christ was a dramatic declaration. Paul elevated women and all people to total equality in Christ. This verse is most likely where the founding fathers of the United States came to realize that, “All men are created equal, and were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
However, this concept of equality in no way nullifies the teaching that wives are to be in submission to their husbands. A wife’s equality simply keeps her from ever seeing herself as inferior to her husband. Submission is an issue of order in the home, which allows a husband to lead his wife and children with the authority given by God, and governed by God’s Word. If you think about it, God has created you with only one head on your shoulders, because that allows your whole body to move and work in order and harmony. Always remember that Jesus submitted to His Father’s will because of this same divine order, and He is coequal with the Father as the express image of Him (Heb. 1:3).
The consequences for Adam joining into Eve’s sin. Vs. 17-19
God declared to Adam, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’”
Because you have heeded the voice of your wife.
Notice that God leads off with His charge against Adam by saying to him, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife,” and have eaten of the tree, these will be the consequences for your sin. What was Adam supposed to do instead of heeding the voice of his wife? He was to heed the voice of God, not her voice. This is one of the primary reasons people fall into sin and disobedience. This was also one of the central reasons why the Children of Israel backslid into sin. God speaks through Jeremiah the Prophet and said, “For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward” (Jer. 7:22-24). In these verses God tries to reason with the people of Israel. He asked them to remember when He led them out of Egypt, that He didn’t give them a lot of instruction about sacrificing to Him; He only asked them to obey His voice. But they listened to other people’s voices and refused to hear His voice; they followed the dictates of their own evil hearts. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did! Eve listened to the devil’s voice, and Adam listened to Eve’s voice, and then they both followed the dictates of their own hearts and desires.
The issue of obeying God’s voice, and not your own voice, or other people’s voices, is found throughout the Bible. God constantly warns all of us, “I want you to obey my voice.” Listening to His voice is the key to relationship with the Lord. In Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Moses writes, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before your life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give them.” In the New Testament Jesus declared the key to relationship with Him, which was hearing and following His voice. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” If you are one of His sheep, then you have already heard His voice, and now you only need to continue to follow His voice all the days of your life.
There is such a lesson here for each and every one of us. Who are you listening to when you live and walk through your daily life? When important decisions come up, do you go to the Word of God to consider what God has said on the topic, or do you allow yourself to be swayed by what people say, or, do you just do what you think is good? Your decisions at these moments will mean the difference between going forward and maturing in your faith or going backward. Remember this last phrase in the message of Jeremiah, that the people, “Went backward and not forward.” Don’t let this happen to you!
Cursed is the ground for your sake.
Because of Adam’s sin of disobedience, God placed a curse upon the ground and all the physical creation. Before the fall, the ground brought forth fruit all on its own, but after the fall, the land would now continue to bring forth good fruit, but with thorns and thistles, which always grow faster than the good plants. Adam, who worked with ease and with joy before the fall, would now toil and labor with the sweat of his brow to eat and make a living. Oh, how we all remember these verses as we sweat and toil over our appointed work. Can you imagine what life and work would have been like without this curse?
One of the biggest misunderstandings of this passage is that work is a part of the curse. This is incorrect. Why? Because Adam tilled and kept the garden before the fall of man (Gen. 2:15). So work was not part of the curse; it’s the experience that we have in our work. It’s the experience of toil, hardship, sorrow, and pain as we work. Adam and Eve exchanged a pleasurable work experience for hardship and pain. Listen to Job describe the weariness of life when he declared, “Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man? Like a servant who earnestly desires the shade, and like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages, so I have been allotted months of futility, and wearisome nights have been appointed to me” (Job 7:1-3). All the weariness of this life should only make us long for Heaven all the more!
In addition, God now made the earth to bring forth thorns and thistles, or weeds. Wherever you see this term, thorns, thistles, or briers, that is a phrase that describes the curse (Prov. 15:19; Prov. 22:5: Is. 5:6; Heb. 6:8). Wherever you see these terms in the Old or New Testaments, this imagery is referring to the results of the fall of man. So, the next time you are out weeding your yard, remember that Adam and Eve’s disobedience is responsible for all this toil.
For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
Last, God gave Adam the ultimate consequence for his sin, which is a death sentence. God told Adam, “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). Paul declared the same thing when he wrote, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men” (Rom. 5:12. Because of Adam’s sin, all people are born spiritually dead, and will one day die physically. From the ground Adam was taken, and to the ground he must return. Remember this fact as you make the choices in your life.
Every single time I stand at a graveside or do a memorial service it reminds me that I too will one day return to the dust. Knowing this truth should cause you to change your priorities. Are you laboring for the things that perish, or the things that will last for eternity? It is a sobering thought to realize that all of our material things at our death will be given to a family member, go to a thrift store, or be thrown in the trash. You are not taking anything with you! Knowing that you will return to the dust, should also cause you to consider why you experience sorrow and pain in this life. It’s not only because of the sin nature passed down to you from Adam, but also because of your own sin and rebellion. It should also remind you that one day you are going to be delivered from this life, and stand before your Maker to give account of your life. The first Adam got us into this mess, but the last Adam, Jesus Christ, has redeemed us from it (1 Cor. 15:45). He wore a crown of thorns, the symbol of the curse, for you and me! But, to experience this great redemption you must receive Christ personally into your life by faith (John 1:12). For those who believe and follow Jesus, He promises, “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). Why will this happen? Because, “There shall be no more curse” (Rev. 22:3). What a glorious day that will be! Genesis begins with how the curse fell upon this world, and the book of Revelation concludes with the curse being cancelled. I encourage you with these words; rejoice in the hope and the glorious liberty that is coming to the children of God, this glorious liberty that one day the entire earth will experience.