In our study of the origin of sin, we find ourselves now in the section of Genesis 3 in which we read the curses that God pronounces on all of the participants in the fall. There was the serpent, who was the instrument of Satan; there is Satan; there is the woman and there is the man. All four of the participants in the fall are cursed in this section. In Verse 14, the serpent is cursed. In Verse 15, Satan is cursed. In Verse 16, the woman is cursed. In Verses 17 to 19, the man Adam is cursed. Now as you know, in the first seven verses of Chapter 3 you have the temptation, where Satan comes to Eve, deceives her, and then Adam joins in and they sin. Then in Verses 8 to 13 you have the divine confrontation. Now that they have sinned, they are confronted by God. The temptation led to the fall. The confrontation leads to the revelation of their depravity. So we learn about temptation and the fall, and then confrontation and depravity.
Summing it up, the paradise of God has been lost and the first couple, Adam and Eve, has been plunged into an unimagined new attitude toward God. They are disobedient to God; they lack fellowship with God; the sentence of death is on them from God; they are unwilling to acknowledge their sin to God. They are in a disposition of self-justification and exoneration, and demonstrated inability to honestly repent for what they have done. And that is the condition that we call human depravity. They can’t do anything to change it either. They will not desire, nor can they desire, to repent. And they have no means in themselves to overcome their sin or its penalty. And so from Adam and Eve, that has become the condition of all men and women who have ever lived. Their condition is fixed. Paradise was lost for everyone. And everyone who’s ever been born into the world, with the exception of Jesus Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, has been born a sinner, with the principle of sin operative in their nature; rebellion against God, no desire to repent, only a desire to justify themselves, exonerate themselves and put the blame for their failures on somebody else, and no ability to alter their sinful condition or do anything to bring about their own salvation. That is the curse on all humanity.
There is a particular series of curses then that are given, as I said, to the particulars in the fall. The serpent, Verse 14; Satan, Verse 15; the woman, Verse 16; and the man, Verses 17 to 19. And these divine curses expressed the punishment of holy God. Not as I said last time just the natural effect of the fall, which was sinfulness, but an absolute rendering of divine sentence upon those who were involved.
The last time, we looked initially at the natural serpent in Verse 14. “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,’” because you have participated in this, even though he was not a willing or rational participant, “… cursed are you more than all cattle,” literally cursed are you out of all cattle, that would be domestic animals, and out of all the “beasts of the field,” that would be the non-domesticated animals, “‘…on your belly shall you go,’” indicating that probably this animal was upright, maybe on all of fours. And that could be why he’s called a “dragon” as well as a “serpent.” He may first have been a dragon with legs and feet. But from now on you’ll go: “‘…on your belly and dust shall you eat all the days of your life.’” And we went over that in detail last time. The curse on the serpent was to crawl on its belly. And Leviticus 11:42 in the Mosaic law it says: “Whatever crawls on its belly, you shall not eat, for they are abominable or detestable.”
As I said, the snake is not a willing, compliant personality. The snake has no personality. It has no self-consciousness. It has no soul. A snake, like every other animal, doesn’t know it exists. But snakes here then are not punished in some personal way, but really become a symbol of the punishment of Satan. Snakes are, by Mosaic economy standards, unclean of all the animals generally speaking in the world. They are the most repulsive, the most hated and the most despised. And though the serpent may have been upright, the serpent was no longer upright. His nature is somehow changed. His anatomy is altered. This, as I said, is no real punishment to the snake itself, since they are non-rational, non-self-conscious. And since they don’t know that they exist and they have no moral sense, they did not willingly offer themselves in the temptation. But snakes become an illustration of Satan. And every snake that crawls is a symbol of the Satan, who is downcast, the tempter and the destroyer of paradise. They are all reminders that the one who sought to be above God was cast out of heaven. When he came to earth, he sought again to elevate himself, and was cast down, and is literally symbolized in the snake that slides on its belly.
So snakes then provide for us pictures, symbols of divine judgment on Satan, who sought to be higher than God, and was placed as low as possible. This then is not so much the punishment of the serpent, as it is the statement of God’s punishment of his great adversary Satan himself. And it makes the seriousness of God’s punishment of Satan more dramatic and more visible. Every time you see a snake, be reminded that God has vanquished Satan to the lowest level, symbolized in that crawling snake. Even today, as we closed last time, I remind you that we look around our world, and when you see snakes, you see them often associated with pagan forms of worship. You see them associated with occult practices and particularly involved with Satan worship.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
