Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #16 of Genesis, chapter 3 and we are going to read Genesis 3:14-15:

And JEHOVAH God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

I will stop reading there. We are reading an historical narrative. This is the actual record of the event that was the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. We saw that God first came to Adam and asked him if he ate of the tree. Adam said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Then God went to the woman and said, “What is this that thou hast done?” The woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Then God turned to the serpent. The Lord is addressing each guilty party and all are found guilty of breaking the Law of God. Adam broke the Law of God. Eve broke the Law of God. The serpent broke the Law of God. God asked Adam and Eve what they had done in Genesis 3:11: “Hast thou eaten of the tree?” And God asked Eve, “What is this that thou hast done?” He asked the question of the man and He asked the question of the woman. They were created in the image of God and they were obligated to obey the Law of God or the Word of God, so God is addressing them as responsible creatures.

The serpent was indwelt by Satan and since the serpent itself was an animal, it was not on the same level as mankind that was created in the image of God, even though Satan was indwelling the creature and he was a higher creation than the animals. He was an angelic being, but now he is a fallen angelic being. There is a reason that God does not ask the serpent a question. God said to him, “Because thou hast done this,” but notice that He did not ask him why he had done this. There is no question. It is just an absolute declaration and it is just a statement of fact that he had done it. God is not asking him the reasons for doing it, but God is saying that because he has done this He pronounces the curse or judgment against him.

I think the difference in questioning mankind is because God had provided a salvation program for mankind. We read about that throughout the Bible and God often comes to sinful mankind and asks him questions. In one place, for example, He asked man that would not turn from sin, “For why will you die, O house of Israel?”

So, God is speaking to a creature that He created in His own image and, therefore, He is dealing with them differently than the fallen angel and the animals that do not have the image of God. Even though animals were not guilty of anything, when God pronounced a curse on the creation, the animals also die and will cease to exist. However, God’s penalty on Satan is more involved than that and we see that in these verse in Genesis 3, verse 14. One of the more grievous things about Satan’s condemnation and the fallen angels is that there was no provision made for possible salvation. In other words, God did not die for the sins of any of the fallen angels. When Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, He did not take upon Him the sins of any of the fallen angels. Jesus only died for the sins of elect men and women that He chose to save; their sins were laid upon Him.

By the way, in 33AD Christ went to the cross and completed the tableau or demonstration of the atoning work He had performed from the foundation of the world. Because the atoning work was done before the world began, up until the time of the cross the fallen angels could have argued, “Maybe there was some provision for us.” But once Christ went to the cross to complete the manifestation of what He had done, it became evident and certain that Jesus only died for (elect) mankind; He did not die for any angels. That is one of the reasons why the cross was such a crushing blow to Satan and he received his “deadly wound” at that point because it was confirmation and certain evidence of what Jesus had done in the actual atonement in paying for the sins of His elect from the foundation of the world. In other words, it was manifested that He did not pay for the sins of any of the angels and this is why they were “cast down to hell,” as it says in 2Peter 2:4:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

Here, it says that God did not spare the angels and to “spare” would mean to deliver or save. He did not save the angels that sinned, but He cast them down to hell. He did not cast them into a literal place because there is no literal place called “Hell.” Hell identifies with the grave or condition of death. They were delivered into “chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.” Why does it use the term “chains of darkness”? It is because there was no salvation for them. There was no light of salvation for them and, as a result, what Jesus demonstrated at the cross “chained” them in that darkness.

It is just like today after the Tribulation when the “sun was darkened” and the world has also entered into the condition of “hell” and, in a sense, the unsaved are in “chains of darkness” during this period of judgment until they are destroyed on the very last day of the prolonged period of judgment. When there is no salvation, there is wrath and condemnation and judgment and it is a very real judgment and then there is the final point of destruction.

This is one reason that God does not question the serpent about his sin. There was no provision made for his salvation, so God is not trying to get Satan’s conscience to work or to provoke a sense of wrongdoing as He did with man, where there was still hope after sin for mankind because of God’s salvation program. However, there was never such hope for the serpent. Therefore, God said to the serpent, “Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.”

We have talked about this before because the words translated as “cattle” and “beast” appeared earlier in the first chapter of Genesis. In the first instance, they refer to the creatures that God made to populate the earth and God did curse the creation; He cursed the earth; He cursed the heavens because the sun, moon and stars were all part of this creation. They were all cursed and would see corruption. The curse upon the earth included a curse upon the animals. All the creatures of the earth that had life in this world (no matter what kind of creature) became cursed because of Adam and Eve’s sin. God had to curse the entire creation because it was not feasible to have a sin-cursed man in dominion over a perfect creation. Contributing to the curse of man would be a cursed creation. We see the effects of this curse right up to today and throughout the history of the world. The fact that animals die is part of the curse. They live short lives.

And just think about how man’s life is very short, is it not? God has established man’s age to be 70 or 80 as the average life span of man. If God did not set that timeline for the life span for man, we would probably have continued to live for even less time because of the effects of the curse on creation. But God established it for His own purposes and, yet, animals would have lived forever because there was no death. They would have continued to live in the perfect creation forever, but now they live short life spans. A dog might live 10 or 15 or even 20 years and 20 years would be very old for a dog, so the life span of animals was greatly cut short as part of the curse. While they live, they also get diseases and they also feel the ill effects of the curse upon creation. Other animals may devour them because of the effects of the curse. Prior to man’s sin and God’s condemnation of the world, the animals lived peacefully; they did not kill one another or fight one another. But now we see cats and dogs fighting and cats killing mice, and so on. Throughout the animal kingdom, there is dying and death. It is a terrible thing.

Since mankind’s sin there has been a curse on cattle and beasts and the entire earth. Yet, God said to the serpent, “Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.” Concerning the creature called a “serpent,” there was a particular curse placed upon it. It was said to be more subtil than any beast of the field. It had a reputation for wisdom. Apparently, that creature had not crawled upon its belly prior to the fall because God pronounced this curse: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” It appears the serpent had not crawled on its belly prior to the curse, so this curse had a particular effect upon this creature, but we should not think that snakes are more cursed than other animals. All the creation is cursed and the creature known as a serpent or snake has also experienced a curse, but the real emphasis behind this language is focused on Satan. It is geared toward Satan because in the Bible cattle and beasts also typify men. We spent a little bit of time discussing this in our earlier studies where God pronounced judgments upon “man and beast.” Or, when Jonah went into Nineveh the king commanded “man and beast” to sit in sackcloth and ashes, so even the beasts, as it were, repented in sackcloth and ashes. That is because “cattle and beasts” represent mankind. So we can understand that God is saying that the serpent is cursed above man and, again, this relates to the fact that there is no provision of salvation for Satan or the fallen angels, but there has been a provision for mankind. Of course, this only applied to the elect. When God sent forth the Gospel into the world, none of us knew who the elect were, so it was open to mankind and anyone could approach God and boldly come to the throne of grace in the day of salvation. They could beseech the Lord and cry out for mercy and they could hope they were one of the elect. They could cry for mercy as long as they wanted and they could have hope that God might hear and have mercy. We knew He would have mercy on whom He would have mercy, but we could hope that we were one that God had chosen. This was the hope reserved for mankind, even though he was cursed. Through his own sin, man came under the wrath of God and the curse of God. The serpent was also cursed, but Satan and all the angels that fell with him had no such hope. They never had that kind of hope, even though they could have deceived themselves up until the time of the cross, but God had not given any indication in the Bible that He had wrought salvation for any of the fallen angels. Therefore, they were cursed far beyond what mankind had been cursed with because they never had the hope of salvation.

I have mentioned this before. Some people say, “It is not fair that God only saves certain ones. It is not right. It is not just. He saves certain elect, but He never saves the rest.” Yet, you never hear these same people say that it is not fair that God does not save Satan or any of the fallen angels. No one makes that charge against God and they do not say, “O, God, you did not provide salvation for any of the fallen angels, so you are not just. You are not right in failing to provide salvation for any of the angels.” You never hear anyone say that, but they rightly think, “That is good. I am glad there was no salvation provided for Satan and the fallen angels.” What does man think about God’s condemnation of all the fallen angels? We think, “They got what they deserved.” We think it was a just and right thing for God to condemn them and to offer them no hope and no possibility of salvation in any way. And, yet, God could have equally done the same thing with mankind. He could have equally said, “Just as the serpent sinned, so did Adam and Eve and all mankind in them.” God could have told man that they would also be destroyed. They had all done wrong. They had all offended God. He could have provided no salvation for anyone and that would have been right and just and a very fair thing for God to do. He would have satisfied the Law’s demand for death by killing all offenders. Who could have argued?

Yet, in His mercy, love, grace and gentle kindness, God looked at the human race and He said they were all guilty. They were all dirty, rotten sinners. There were none righteous. They were all equally in the mire and filthiness of sin and, yet, God determined to choose a people for Himself in His good pleasure: “I am going to make a bride for my Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and this ‘woman’ will come out of His side.” So, God chose Jacob and not Esau and He made selection of all mankind that would live down through history. None of His selection was based on merit or works because their works were evil, so it was all based on the work and merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were saved by His faith and His righteousness. Who can argue and speak against God in this? Well, men do argue, but they do not have any merit behind their argument. They have nothing they can say against God’s salvation program. It is most just.