The first three chapters of the Bible tell us the story of the Creation and what happened next. In the first three days of Creation God spoke into the nothingness and created the light. He made the waters and he made the dry land. And we read, in Genesis 1:10. God saw that it was good. He created all the different kinds of vegetation and again we see, “God saw that it was good.”
On the fourth day God created the sun and the moon to separate day from night and God saw that was good. On the fifth day God created all the sea creatures and all the birds. Again God saw that everything was good and God blessed all these creatures. On the sixth day God created all the land animals, both livestock and wild animals. And God saw that everything was good. So he created human beings in his image, to be his likeness, to take care of his creation. And we read in
Genesis 1 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
So when God created the world everything was perfect. But then we have just read from Genesis 3 the story of how one act of disobedience and rebellion spoiled everything which God had created. The serpent deceived Eve and Adam and the first human beings disobeyed the one instruction God had given them – not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did eat, and that one action brought sin into the world and ruined so many things.
We have talked in other sermons about how the Fall happened. This evening we are going to think specifically about the consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. The first thing was that evil had entered into the world. The second consequence was that the whole earth was cursed and that also brought sickness, pain and death to all human beings from then onwards. And finally, worst of all, their sin separated human beings from God their Creator as Adam and Eve were banished from Eden.
Evil entered into the world in the form of the snake, the serpent. The Bible later explains that the serpent was actually the devil appearing to Eve to deceive her.
Revelation 12:9 refers to ” that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray”.
Revelation 20:2 talks about “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan”.
In the form of a serpent, the devil lied to Eve and deceived her into disobeying God and into leading Adam to do the same. So God’s judgment falls first and foremost on the serpent.
Genesis 3 14 So the LORD God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
God’s curse is not so much on snakes as animals but more on the devil, Satan, for bringing evil into the world. And that was the beginning of the endless battle which all human beings are engaged in against the devil and all the forces of evil.
15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
Then the second consequence of sin was God’s curse of judgment on the whole earth. This curse on the earth had a number of effects. It brought pain and suffering on to the earth, starting with Eve herself.
16 To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Not only human beings, but the land itself came under God’s curse.
17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
This explains the ongoing battle which farmers and gardeners know so well to grow our food. And then Genesis 3 tells us that it was Adam and Eve’s sin which brought physical death into the world. In God’s perfect creation, human beings would have been immortal. But after their rebellion, Adam and Eve were doomed to die.

19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’
Paul explains this to the Romans
Romans 5 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.
NLT 12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.
So the Fall brought judgment on the whole earth and brought death into the world. Even worse than all of this, Adam and Eve’s disobedience had another terrible consequence. Their sin separated them off from the holy God whose eyes are too pure to look on sin. Beforehand, God used to walk with Adam and Eve in the Garden. After they had rebelled, Adam and Eve had to hide themselves away from God because of their guilt and shame. Now they were both afraid of God. Because of their sin God cast Adam and Eve out from the Garden of Eden and out from his presence.
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Evil had entered God’s perfect Creation. This brought pain and suffering and death and a curse on the ground. And it left human beings banished from Paradise. This is how the Bible explains the world of tears we live in and why all human beings are naturally separated from God their Creator.
But here in Genesis 3 we also find a wonderful promise of hope! Let me give you the Greek word theologians use for it – the protoevangelium, the first gospel. In the second century the Early Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus preached about Genesis 3:15 as the very first appearance of the gospel and the very first prophecy of the Messiah in the Old Testament. This first gospel comes in the second half of God’s curse on the serpent, the devil.
Genesis 3 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner described this promise as “the first glimmer of the gospel” and “the first hint of a Saviour.”
The Hebrew word translated as offspring in the NIV is zera. It literally means seed or seeds. It is sometimes translated as descendants or posterity, to refer to a family line which is more than a generation removed from the original person. The meaning of zera can be singular or plural, descendant or descendants. But here in the Hebrew and also in ancient translations of the Old Testament, when it says “he will crush your head” the “he” is always in the masculine singular. “He” will be a single male individual, one specific descendant of Eve, the seed of the woman.
Genesis 3 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
Good News Bible I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring’s heel.
So here is the wonderful promise of the protoevangelium, the first gospel, the promise of the seed of the woman. One day a particular offspring, a descendant of the woman, will crush the head of the serpent and destroy it!
The devil brought evil into the world, and pain and suffering and death and banishment from God’s presence. But Adam and Eve also bear some responsibility. It was the first human beings who rebelled against God and disobeyed his only command to them. So it will be necessary for a human being to be at the centre of God’s masterplan of salvation. It would have to be a human being who would crush the devil’s head and so reverse all the damage caused by the Fall. It would be an offspring of the woman who would defeat death. And it would be the seed of the woman who one day would bring human beings back into relationship with God our Creator, so that we could walk in fellowship in God’s presence once again. With hindsight we can see that the promise of the offspring of the woman here in Genesis 3:15 is indeed the first hint of a Saviour. It is prophecy about the the Lord Jesus Christ, who God would send to set us all free.
Hebrews 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
On the cross Jesus did indeed defeat the devil. Jesus defeated death and set us free from all the devil’s power over human beings. By his cross and resurrection Jesus reversed all the damage done by the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Next week we will see how this hope of seed, of offspring and descendants, was expressed in God’s covenants with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And in the weeks to follow we will look at how the New Testament understood Jesus to be the fulfilment of these promises, the seed of the woman. All leading up to our celebration of Christmas as we see how God became man, to be the offspring of the woman, the seed who brings us all salvation. But it all began here in Genesis 3, with this first hint of a Saviour.