Agriculture Without God’s Blessings
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.”
We are continuing to read of the specific curses given by God to the three parties responsible for the first human sin. Last week we covered the curses given to the serpent (Satan) and Eve and the repercussions of those curses through the history of humanity. Today we are looking at the specific curse pronounced on Adam. Again, we should look at this section as God’s pronouncement of what life would be like without His active guidance, involvement and blessing from that time forward.
Notice that God begins the curse on Adam by reminding him of his failure to:
1. Properly lead his wife.
2. Stand up for what was right as an individual, despite the decision his wife made.
It is important for us to be aware that sin is sin—no matter how the sin comes about or what excuse we make for it. We are responsible for ourselves and must make sure we don’t follow others into sinful practices (Proverbs 1:10-14; 4:14-15).
God then announces that the curse on Adam (and mankind) would include the removal of God’s blessing on agriculture. Before Adam and Eve’s sin, all Adam had to do was “tend and keep” the garden in which God had placed him (Genesis 2:15). Adam still had to work to cultivate the garden; but under God’s complete blessing, it was relatively easy.
After sin and the removal of God’s direct blessings, the ground would become much more difficult to cultivate and would require harder and more strenuous work (“in the sweat of your face,” Genesis 3:19) to yield produce. Without God’s blessing, it would be a constant struggle to control weeds (“thorns and thistles,” verse 18).
This was not how God intended for the creation to operate. As originally designed by God’s hand, the earth’s habitat was to be beautiful, ordered and nearly self-sustaining (Genesis 2:5-6). Without God’s blessing, it would be the opposite.
The good news is that this curse will be reversed when all things are restored to God’s original purpose and design after the return of Jesus Christ (Acts 3:19). Several prophecies of the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ reveal how agriculture will be restored to the original blessings of the Garden of Eden (Amos 9:13-14).
To learn more about what life will be like when “all things” are restored in the Millennium, read “1000 Years Millennium.”
Tomorrow on the Daily Bible Verse Blog: “Wages of Sin.”
