For You Are Dust

Introduction

Well it is fitting that we are talking about frustration in work today and I have to make an announcement about something that has been frustrating us at work. You may have noticed that the eNews has been going to your spam folder. We are aware of it, its been outside of our control, but we are trying to fix it. For now, if you see it in your spam folder and move it to your inbox, that might trick your email into continuing to send it to your inbox for now while we try to fix it. If you aren’t signed up for the eNews, I cannot recommend it enough. It is our main point of contact to you all during the week.

If you have been coming to worship during our Genesis series, you’ll know that Brendan’s text from last week left us on a bit of a cliffhanger. The Serpent had found his way into the Garden, Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree, the Serpent got what he wanted, and God descended to confront His creatures. Everything last week was like a courtroom drama leading up to the verdict - the characters are hiding, they are shifting blame, and the Judge watches on.

This week, as _____ read a moment ago, we get the verdict from the Judge. Last week, Brendan did an excellent job showing the Fall’s effects on our relationship with God. And this week, the Curse, shows how the Fall splinters and fractures out from there. And those fractures are devastating. Think about the dread you’d feel walking out onto ice and in the middle of the lake you hear a deep and terrifying crack. But, the it's not just the initial crack that is terrifying, it's all the little fractures that spider out from you.

As we will see today, quite literally all of creation has been affected by the Fall and the Curse. Our passage today is God’s verdict on sinful humanity. Back in Genesis 2.17, God told Adam that if he ate from the tree “surely you will die.” Or, as the Hebrew emphatically puts it, “dying you will die.” And last week, we saw the spiritual death that has come from the Fall. This week, we get to see the long process of physical death that comes from the Fall. It is a bleak, but shockingly accurate depiction of what life east of Eden looks like.

Christianity often gets called a “pie in the sky” religion. “Christianity doesn’t care about or focus on the real problems of this world. Christians just live in a blissful ignorance about the pains of the world, stick their heads in the sand, and wait until heaven. They just care about sin and not suffering.” But, right from the third chapter of the Bible, we have a shockingly honest depiction and reason for the pain in the world. And then there are whole books in Scripture like Proverbs that talk about what it is like to live in this current world or Lamentations that talk about the sorrow and pain in this current world.

In our passage today, we will see that the sin of Adam and Eve has given birth to a new category in life - something that we have all felt -  futility. Have you done everything right in your job, worked hard, put in the hours, and for some reason things just aren’t working out this year? Have you worked hard at setting a good example and hit the perfect balance between gentle and firm parenting but your kids still make terrible choices? Have you worked out every other day for 60 minutes for years, sworn off fast food for years, and never missed leg day but that diagnosis still comes? We have all felt it somehow: the idea that all of the hard work has been for nothing.

Today, I want us to see that although the Curse shows us the origins of futility it also points to the very solution for all futility. And we are going to look at that under three headings: What God says to the Man, What God says to the Woman, and What God says to the Serpent.

What God says to the Man

First, we are going to look at “What God says to the Man.” Last week, we saw the fracture that was placed between man and God. This week, we will see two other fractures of futility. The first is addressed to the man: vocational futility.

Two weeks ago, in chapter 2, we started walking down the path of thinking through a Biblical understanding of work and rest. Genesis 1 and 2 made it clear that mankind was made to work and made to rest. And when we work hard and when we Sabbath, we reflect God. Specifically, God placed humanity in the Garden “to work it and keep it,” (2.15).

I don’t know how long Adam and Eve went about this task of working and keeping the Garden before the Fall. But, their work would forever be affected by the Fall. Something that you will notice about the three verdicts that God delivers is that each one fits the culprit - the man, the woman, and the serpent - in distinct ways.

Since the sin of Adam and Eve involved eating, it only makes sense that part of the Curse would involve eating. The pronouncement against Adam is three verses (which is the most out of the three culprits), and even though it is only three verses the word “eat” appears 5 times. And we just get a vividly real picture of what work looks like post-Fall. “...in pain shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread…” (Genesis 3.17b-19a).

Work would no longer be a blissful and joyful call from the Lord to His people. Now, humanity would have to exert force, experience pain, and toil in sweat just to eat. Doesn’t sound like dominion to me anymore. And not only would humanity have to work that hard just to eat - the very earth that Adam was made to work would fight against him. As one commentator put it, “[Thorns and thistles] are eloquent signs of nature untamed and encroaching…” They aren’t new creations, but a perennial threat and reminder.

And agriculture is the perfect way to depict futility in our vocation. You can plant seeds and water those seeds and nothing will happen. Or you can plant seeds and water them and care for the sprouts as they come out of the ground. You can tend to them every day, checking on them, tenderly inspecting the leaves, and then one day you wake up and something outside of your control has ruined these plants - be that thorns, the climate, erosion, or a careless neighbor. Or maybe you actually pain-stakingly get the plants to harvest-time and are able to take the crop back to the barn and you find out they have been rotted from the inside by insects.

And even though the words and poetry that the Lord employs here are agricultural, this aspect of the Curse has spread to all of our vocations. Although we might not physically plant the food that is on our table, we all sweat, hack through thorns and thistles, and put that food there. Every single person has faced futility in their work. Always being behind at work, despite working your hardest. The house being a wreck, despite constantly cleaning. Never quite getting the thanks and recognition at home or in the office or amongst friends, despite lovingly contributing where you are.

Not to mention the fact that you can give everything to a job that you really care about and then are laid off because of circumstances outside your control. Or you can be a stay at home husband, wife, father, or mother and work heartily and deeply for your family and your family does not see what you do. The Curse is placed on the ground and as people of the ground, our work is ripe with thorns and thistles. While for most of history and around the world, working the ground has mostly affected men, all of us have felt how thorns and thistles pervade all our work - whether in the workplace or in the home. Futility rears its ugly head and gets a grip on us whenever we think, “What’s the use in trying?”

But, those don’t even scratch the surface of the ultimate way that futility has its claim on us. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” (Gen. 3.19). The ultimate mark of futility’s claim on our lives is that we will all die. No matter how much we do, no matter how much money we make, no matter how many children we raise, no matter how many jobs we create, no matter the legacy we leave behind - we are dust and we will return to the dust that we were brought from.

Sure enough, people have tried to live on past their death - either medically or by their legacy. Either way, it all turns to dust. That’s what is so haunting about Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” Shelley talks about how he met a traveller that has just gotten back from a distant land. That traveller saw the broken remains of a statue of a mighty king. The pedestal next to the statue read “My name is Ozymandias, King of kings, look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair.” We’ve all seen it before, the mighty statue of a king, proclaiming the works and accomplishments they have done. And yet, here lies this statue broken in the sand. And everything around it? “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.” Because of the Curse, futility grabbed a hold of our works and they too become like dust in the face of our death.

A group of theologians got together and wrote about this futility and put it this way, “Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea. All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see. Dust in the wind… all we are… is dust in the wind.. Oooooooooooo.” Those theologians were Kansas… in their song… “dust in the wind…”

The fracture of futility does not stop at our relationship to our vocations, though. It extends to our relationships with others as well.

What God said to the Woman

That takes us to our second point, “What God said to the Woman.” If what God told Adam showed us the fracturing and futility in our vocations, what God says to Eve shows us the fracturing and futility that can come in our relationships.

And we have all felt that relational futility, even in the simplest ways. I mean think about all the little awkward ways that it happens. How many hours have you spent with that coworker and you… just… can’t remember their name? Or, heaven forbid, we call them the wrong name! And luckily that never happens at church, right? From the awkward and mundane to the heartbreaking and serious, our relational futility goes back to this moment. The proclamation against Eve is the shortest of three, but it does not spare us from the relational implications of the Fall. And it shows us this futility in two directions.

First, “‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children,’” (Gen. 3.16a). We slightly talked about this three weeks ago when we looked at Genesis 1.28, but here we have the first relational futility and it is generational. And I want to reiterate and expand upon what I said then. The proclamation in this part of verse 16 is not limited to physical childbirth. The physical pain and anguish of labor points to the emotional and spiritual pain that comes from raising children. And if you don’t think there can be futility in the parent-child relationship… I need to know what brand of soundproof rock you have been living under.

The parent-child relationship can be fraught with futility this side of the Fall. In many ways it can begin before there is even a child. One of the primary ways that futility is felt is in infertility. Having children is a good thing, God made us with the potentiality to have children and love them. And that specific type of futility can bring about a level of “What’s the use?” that many of us don’t realize. But, the futility in the parent-child relationship also grabs hold of those who have suffered through miscarriages and stillbirths. It also grabs hold of those who have loved their children, given everything to them, taught them the best they could, and their children turn their backs on them.

And just like the proclamation against Adam has affected all people who work (not just men), so too do more than just women feel the “pain in childbirth” aspects of the Fall (for the reasons I said above). Men certainly know the thorns and thistles that can come from raising children. I mean today being Father’s Day can prove that. For some of you, I am sure this is an amazing day that you will spend with your family. And for some of you, I am sure that it is just a reminder of what was.

However, to say that the experience is the same for both men and women would do an injustice to the text, how God made men and women, and many people’s experiences. The “pain in childbirth” aspect of the Fall does affect women in a profoundly different way than men. Women are designed, among many things, to carry babies, to sustain them, and to nourish them - there is simply a connection there that men just don’t have. And that connection lends itself to a heightened awareness of this aspect of the futility of the Fall. And it doesn’t go away once the baby is a toddler or a kid or a teenager - that connection and that awareness lasts. As one woman told me a few weeks ago, the pain in childbirth goes far beyond birth. “My body used to literally keep you alive,” she said talking about her child, “and now I have to get ready to send you out of my house into the world?” And after our kids walk outside that door, what awaits them?

The other relational facture of futility is seen in the second half of verse 16, “‘Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you,’” (Gen. 3.16b ESV). Now, there is something worth pointing out about this passage, because your translation could sound different than what I just read. The ESV says that Eve’s desire would be “contrary to your husband” while the CSB, NASB, NIV, and KJV all say “for” or “towards.” The Hebrew word there is just “toward,” but one of the beautiful (and confusing) things about Hebrew is the subtly in the language. And that can get turned up to ten when we are reading poetry, which this section is.

However, regardless of whether we translate that word as “toward” or “contrary,” the result is still the same: the marriage relationship has been affected by the Fall. I mean, we already saw a glimpse of that last week. Remember what Adam says in verse 12? “‘This woman whom You gave to be with me…’” The poetry and song that Adam lavished over his wife are gone. Whether Eve’s desire would be against her husband or affectionately toward him or wanting his position, the result was the same: Adam would rule over her. As one Old Testament scholar put it, proper male headship could now be tyrannical and not loving - self-serving instead of self-giving.

All interpersonal aspects of human relationships feel the fractures of the Fall. While those aspects are symbolized by marriage and children, respectively, that doesn’t mean that other personal relationships haven’t felt this fracturing futility. Friends that you have laughed with, cried with, dined with, and lived with may slowly drift away. Colleagues that you have worked hard with and burned the midnight oil with may backstab you to get ahead.

And, that ultimate futility of death hangs over our relationships as well. And from here on the story of the Bible and the nature of our sermon series is going to pick up steam - following this ultimate futility of death. Next week, we will walk through the story of the first recorded human death in Genesis 4. And then, in Genesis 5, we fall headfirst into the descendants of Adam. And every genealogy that Genesis presents to us has the same emphasis: we can get focused on how long all of them lived but that not the point - the point is: no matter how long any of them lived, the drumbeat of the book of Genesis is “and he died… and he died… and he died…” The ultimate futility of death was spreading. And there was nothing we could do to stop the spiral down into futility, because we are dust. We needed something and Someone outside the futility to step in and do what we cannot.

What God said to the Serpent

Finally, we have come to “What God said to the Serpent.” Last week’s passage and this one have made a bit of a seam, have you heard it yet? I don’t know if you have noticed, but I didn’t exactly preach the text in the order we are given. And that’s kinda the point. Think back to God’s questioning of His creatures, what order does He go through? Man to Woman to Serpent. And in our passage this week, what order does God make His verdicts? Serpent to Woman to Man. He addresses them in the inverse order with Satan right at the peak - this is what it has been building to.

Did you notice that Satan isn’t allowed to defend himself? God has no questions for the Father of Lies - only His sentencing. The first bit of the sentencing is a bit of (literally) poetic justice done to Satan. Satan appeared to Eve and Adam disguised as a Serpent and now God was punishing him as a serpent. Just as a serpent moves on its stomach, so too would Satan slither and hide and worm about for the rest of his days. As one scholar said, “Satan’s choice [of appearance] had been more apt than he would have preferred.” Satan wanted a “relationship” with humanity - he wanted them. But, (thanks to BK for pointing this out to me) what does God’s curse on him say? “‘...and dust you shall eat all the days of your life,’” (Gen. 3.14b). And what are humans when they die? Dust. Satan’s best in life is to have us after we die. And what is going to become of him?

That’s we get to the second half of the sentencing. And it is too good not to read the whole thing. “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel,’” (Gen. 3.15). And there you have it: God’s first promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And with that one sentence, hope had re-entered the world. God had a promised plan to deal with Satan. Adam and Eve had been given words by God to have faith in.

And did you hear it? The reversing of futility is already present in that one sentence. Because, although there would be pain and toil and fractures and strife, it was leading toward Someone. Eve was promised that one day, despite the pain in childbirth and the inevitability of death, someone from her Offspring would fix the mess that she and Adam had made. As Paul would later say in 1 Timothy, “Yet she will be saved through childbearing…” (1 Tim. 2.15). Futility is being redirected to Satan himself, despite all his efforts he’s only going to eat dust and bruise the heel of the one coming to crush him.

Little did they know that it would be the very God speaking to them. Little did they know that God the Son would become like they are without sin. He would know what it is to be made of dust, to sweat in His work, to experience the thorns and thistles of this life, to be hungry, to experience the effects of the Fall, and ultimately to face death. They didn’t know all that, but they did know that God promised to do what they could not. And He shows them that He can when He makes them garments of skin. They were not able to cover up their guilt, so God did it for them in the Garden with clothes. And in an even more miraculous way, He does it for us through the atoning death of His Son.

Earlier I said that Christianity gives us a brutally accurate depiction of what life in a Fallen world looks like (I’d argue the most accurate of any religion). But, it also gives the best solution to the problem of the Fall, the Curse, and futility.

In Christ’s earthly ministry, He was all about reversing the Curse wherever He went. He raised people from the dead, healed them of their sicknesses, what would have made people unclean under the Law, He made them clean. Everything He did reversed the Curse. But what about the big one? Death. The ultimate weapon in the hands of futility.

Have you ever thought about why Jesus had to rise again? I remember a professor in seminary asked us that one time. And people threw out answers you would expect, “Atonement!” or “To prove who He was!” And the professor said, “Well, He could have done those things just by His death and by an appearance as a spirit afterward. Why did He have to bodily ascend again?” And we all got quiet. “Or else death would have had the final word.” Even if Christ totally accomplished salvation without rising again, death and futility would still have claimed His body. But, because He rose again, death, futility, and the devil have been put to shame. We can only imagine if Satan realized that the pierced feet on Friday would be crushing his head on Sunday.

And we have real, present, tangible hope in the midst of us still wrestling with futility and thorns and fractures. We aren’t told to just bury our heads in the sand (or in a hymnal) until Jesus comes back. Because, as we are united to Him, we are continuing His mission of ministering to a hurting and fallen world. We fight against futility because He did. Whether it is in our vocation or in our relationships, we are able to work and converse and love more and more like He did. Futility is replaced with genuine progress, and progress that can even outlive the confines of our dying bodies. So, when we meet frustration and futility in our work or in our relationships, know that it is not as it ought to be but through the work of the Spirit we can make it more of how God designed it. Knowing that one day, Christ will come again to make all things new. And the importance there is that He is making all things new, not all new things - our vocations and relationships matter now into the New Creation. And in a week of headlines about wars, medically assisted death, and artificial intelligence, believe me - your neighbors, friends, and family need this hope.

And we have present hope against the Serpent, the Father of Lies, that murderer from the beginning. If Genesis 3.15 is the first proclamation of the Gospel, it’s odd that the New Testament writers don’t make that big of a deal about it. But, there is one place that it appears in a subtle way. “For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet…” (Romans 16.19-20a). The Holy Spirit’s work in us is reversing what Adam and Eve did in the Garden. We are being illuminated and shown what is good and evil and He gives us the ability and desire to live accordingly. And even though our great Older Brother is going to finally and fully crush Satan under His feet when He returns in glory, the process has started. And as we are united to Christ, we will be with Him - the Second Adam - when He does what the first Adam should have done in the Garden: cast that Ancient Serpent into the lake of fire.

Conclusion

Before we conclude, I don’t want to steer into that “pie in the sky” mentality. There is still pain and sorrow and toiling and sweating and Curse still on this Fallen planet. Even when we come to Christ, there is still suffering - in fact He tells us to expect it. However, we have present hope in the midst of our suffering. When we look around and feel everything is futile, we can remember that just as Christ became like dust for us - He has promised to make us like Him. And what is the surety we have in that? Because, as Scottish pastor John Duncan said, “The dust of earth now sits on the throne of heaven.”

And as we wait to become like He is, we get to witness the recreation of the earth. For now, we will see it when the Spirit regenerates the hearts of fallen people and brings them into the line of Eve. And it makes you wonder, did Adam and Eve “get it?” Did they actually see the hope that God had offered in 3.15? I think verse 20 has our answer, “The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Despite the pain, despite the toil, despite the fracturing, Adam knew their work would not be futile if it was leading to the offspring who would make it all right. And we have that same promise. Despite the thorns and thistles of this world and the frustrations with our work, we have the promise that it is no longer in vain. Tomorrow, when the thorns of this week start to entangle us once more, we have to hold on to the hope that Christ is working on us and through us despite them. Christ is continuing His redeeming work through His people even through frustrations at work, chaos at home, and everything in between. Because, day by day, we learn to know “...that in the Lord your labor is not in vain,” (1 Cor. 15.58).

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