The Meaning Of Life

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life.

Allow me to say this again. I am non-denominational, a Bible Christian who is desperately trying to read and understand the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit. I do not dislike Ministers and Pastors, I simply know there are problems with some, therefore it is hard for me to trust any. Not trying to be cynical, but I’ve talked with so many people who speak doctrine that is absolutely the opposite of what scriptures says, and they claim it to be truth because “their pastor told them”. And with all due respect, Ministers and Pastors are only relaying their interpretation of the Bible, or repeating what they were instructed at theology school. SDo, I prefer to read the Bible myself, and I take on the aspect that if it is important enough for me to know, God will give me that wisdom. He knows I’m not even close to being a smart man, and that I need all the help I can get, so I place my trust in Him, knowing He will not lead me astray.

All that long winded dissertation said, I’ve heard a pastor suggest the original serpent was possible dragon like, and after he tempted Eve, God turn him into a snake. His curse after all, was to “go on his belly” and “eat dust”. There are many things I don’t understand in the Bible, but this theory certainly makes sense. But I divert to the Divine Inspiration of the Holy Spirit, trust in what He impressed on you.

15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

16 To the woman He said: “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Another reason to believe that God created a perfect earth; all of God’s work is perfect, or as He has indicated, “very good”. And I believe that to mean before sin, a woman would have painless childbirth, but because of sin, it would now be painful.

As far as the husband “ruling” over the wife”, I believe this to be true. But in God’s perfect world, a husband would be totally without fault and the wife would gladly serve him out of love. It’s not a situation of master and slave, it is a perfect union where the husband brings assets to the family and the wife brings assets to the family to form a perfect union. Imagine if Abram had listen to Sarai if she had said, “No! We’re are not leaving Ur for the Land of Caanan, and that’s final!” Where would be be today?

And I also liken this relationship between man and woman to the intended relationship between God and us. Later, we will talk in the Book of Revelation about “the woman”, who in my opinion represents “the church”, and God is “the husband”. We don’t follow God and worship God out of fear, we worship Him because we love Him, and I believe such was the intention relationship between husband and wife. Think about it; we have nothing in life that doesn’t come from God; He is the ultimate provider, and because He loves us, and He gave us life, we love Him in return, and we are obedient to him. It’s like adultery; we aren’t faithful to our spouses because it’s wrong to have an affair, we are faithful to our spouses because we love them, and we don’t want to hurt them. And such should be our relationship with God. We don’t obey His rules because if we don’t follow them, we will end up in Hell (which there is no Hell by the way), we follow and obey His rules because we love him.

17 And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

This to me, indicates once again, how perfect God created this earth. And I believe it is very, very hard to comprehend. Now that Adam sinned, why would he have to toil to work the land? Why would there be “thorns and thistles”? I honestly believe anything that is bed, irritating, a pain in the you-know-what, are all because of sin. Before they sinned, Adam probably didn’t do much of anything but enjoy the sun, enjoy Eve, and worship God. Food was plentiful, it likely regenerated itself when the uneaten fruit rotted, its seeds falling to the ground to sprout up again the next year, and as the Bible said, water sprang up from the ground so all of the plants and herbs were well watered as nature intended for them to be watered. But now that we have sinned, now we are going to have to work for our food. No longer can we bask in the sun and spent our days worshipping our creator. We have to toil to turn over the soil and plant crops, they no longer “spring up” on their own. We have to cultivate and care for our food because now there are invasive weeds that now choke out our plants. No longer does water spring up out of the ground, we have to wait on rain to come, and sometimes we have flooding rains that give too much water and flood our food, and sometimes we have drought where we don’t get enough water to sustain plant life. I remember my parents, who had a garden every year, rented a vacant lot in town, about an acre in size, so they could put out a big garden. There was no water there, so we had to haul water in 5 gallon buckets to the lot every day to water the vegetables. We had it made, until sin. And it hasn’t changed. Today, the troubles we have in life are because of sin. Our lives and relationships would be totally comfortable and perfect if it weren’t for sin. And when you think about the word “sin”, think about Satan, Lucifer, the Devil. He, is “sin”. And all of the sin in our world is because of him and his temptations designed to draw us farther away from our God.

20And Adam named his wife Eve,e because she would be the mother of all the living. 21 And the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them. 22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…”

23 Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 So He drove out the man and stationed cherubim on the east side of the Garden of Eden, along with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life.

Sin altered our perfectly created world. Sin got us evicted from our “Heaven on Earth”. Sin caused the problems we face today. Now, let’s substitute.

Satan altered our perfectly created world. Satan got us evicted from our “Heaven on Earth”. Satan caused the problems we face today.

Father in Heaven, forgive us for ruining the perfect world that you created out of Love for us. Forgive our selfishness as we give in to Satan’s temptations. Inspire us to study Your Word, and give us strength and endurance to follow it out of love for You. We know the end Lord. We know you win. Give us the strength we need to ignore Satan and be on Your winning team. Amen.