This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Genesis 1-4” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 15, 1992.

We begin this evening in Romans chapter 8. This is Romans chapter 8, beginning with verse 18. Romans 8, 18. Listen to the word of God. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption, into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat from it.

Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you shall eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Father, help us with your word, for yet we do struggle while in this world, and we would struggle according to knowledge and in keeping with the faith that has been given to us, your children. We would ask you, Father, to clear up misunderstanding and correct error in us. May we be disciplined by your word so that not only are we corrected with respect to interpretation, but also with respect to life. Bless your church. May she have godly instruction. May she have fine rule. May she also be given wonderful example in ministries of service. We pray, Father, that we might have the full benefit of your word for our lives. For Jesus’ sake, amen. Now, the defendants in this case, Adam and Eve, have been questioned. The questioning is over. They have even been given opportunity to present their cases.

But it seems that at the opening of their mouths, each and every word further indicts them, condemns them. They then stand before the scrutiny of this judge as those who are in fact self-condemned. As well, as we look at them here in this situation, and as we have said previously, there is absolutely nothing attractive in them.

If there is hope for this pair, it must be completely and thoroughly by and through grace. For we have seen the quick, pervasive effect of the depravity of sin so overtake them that now they are left in a state in which they are quick themselves to bring charge against God and so utter blasphemy against him. That is the undercurrent of their statements, as they seek then to justify themselves and to implement God. But not only are they then blasphemous against God, they are vicious toward one another. They blame each other, they blame others for their own circumstance. We come to the end of the matter now as the interrogation ends.

And the last to be implemented by them is the one who acted first, namely that preacher, the serpent. But you’ll note now that the interrogation does not continue, for the serpent, unlike the pair, is not questioned or interrogated by the Lord. It is almost as if such an interrogation is out of place, as if it is even superfluous. Going even further, it is as if such an interrogation of the serpent would be something of a misdirection. Since the serpent is Satan’s charade, the serpent plays the role of Satan’s mask. So to focus upon the mask or the shade behind which Satan himself lurks does not achieve the same goal that the interrogation of Adam and Eve achieved. So the interrogation ends. It drops off.

But to penetrate to an even more deeper level, we see here that God’s action toward the serpent serves God’s purposes in that the stance that God now takes with respect to the serpent and to Satan serves as a rebuke to Satan himself. with which to approach man in order to deceive man. But you see, the end that Satan has in view is that he might receive his own due in the full light of day. That having so achieved victory over Adam and Eve, he might now come out of hiding and present himself fully before the face of humanity, and even before the face of God in all defiance.

God does not then interrogate. God, in his dealings now with the serpent and with Satan through the serpent, enforces his own purposes which do not allow, then, Satan to step into the full light of day. God keeps Satan in the shadow. so that Satan is unable to come out from behind the cover. He will not come out, in fact, until God’s full disclosure is made of himself in his Son, which then compels Satan’s full disclosure for the purpose of claiming worship and glory he imagines to be his own.

And I have here in mind the confrontation between the Son of God and Satan in the Judean wilderness. Revelation of the Son of God brings out of hiding the father of darkness in the interests of his own vanity. But his release from behind his disguise is by God’s will. But presently, the disguise being kept in place as a judgment upon Satan’s vanity and a protection for us, in that now in our sinful state, we, seeing Satan in the full light of day, would not so much be repulsed by his ugliness but captivated by his beauty.

There isn’t anyone here this evening that is a match for Satan. If Satan is allowed to step out behind his cover, there isn’t a person here will not be thoroughly and completely seduced utterly. Merely through the constraint of the beauty of this angel who has fallen.

But even more now, the Lord’s failure to interrogate the serpent must push Adam and Eve themselves. It must push them for an explanation as to why the Lord would not interrogate the serpent. They are now being forced to consider ultimate causes. knowing full well that serpents don’t talk, and that they are not evil in themselves. So Adam and Eve now are being forced to make considerations, theological considerations, with respect to that which is beyond the serpents. They are forced to look for that one who does speak from behind the form of the serpent, and that one who is evil in himself. Satan’s camouflage therefore stays in place as God turns to the serpent now, not to interrogate, so as to bring Satan out in the open, but to judge for the pronouncement of sentence.

And this pronouncement of sentence keeps in place also the Lord’s intention. On the one hand, he speaks to the serpent. He says that this serpent, this creature, is cursed above every other creature. References made to the serpent’s humbled state, the shrewdest of creatures is now the lowest and destined to lick the dust. The camouflage is kept in place as God speaks to the serpent, as if the serpent, you see, were the object of his condemnation. But the camouflage also is penetrated as the Lord pushes the cover behind which Satan slinks to its very limit. For he addresses the serpent as if he were addressing the person. Therefore, the serpent’s slithering in the earth becomes symbolic of a condemnation visited upon one beyond the serpent itself. And the serpent’s diet of dust becomes symbolic of the end of that personality that is discovered behind the serpent.

And obviously, God, in declaring the establishment of perpetual hostility between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed, has in mind more than a female’s possible natural fear of snakes, and a universal war between human children and baby vipers. Likewise, the promise given has more in view than a confrontation between humanity and reptiles, in which humanity wins. The seed in view is obviously collectively considered all the woman’s seed gathered into one, the seed of the serpent belonging to one personality in the greatest of spiritual confrontations.

And in this conflict, the woman’s seed delivers the fatal blow to the head. The one behind the serpent inflicts his own wound, however. to the woman’s seed as the heel is bruised. But it is not a fatal blow. Jesus Christ is the promised seed. He, in his triumph through his death and resurrection, wounds Satan, and that conclusively. But he himself is wounded, though not permanently. And those who belong to this Christ, this seed of the woman, shall in the power of their Savior crush Satan underfoot, as he has promised to them. A promise that is reflected upon by Paul in Romans 16 verse 20. Having dealt now with the serpent, and more particularly with Satan. The Lord turns to the woman and speaks directly to her in the all-too-realistic language of life as it is lived out now in this world.

So realistic is this language that the ordinary response to it is for all to draw back from it. It’s powerful, stark truths. Enter into the world sorrow and pain multiplied, multiplied. Sorrow and pain multiplied. These sorrows and pains not alleviated by modern technique or medicine. Rather, these very realities have forced upon us these modern techniques and medications.

The link between the serpent’s sentence and the woman’s sentence is the mention of the seed. the generation of seed, the appearance of children, which becomes a special pain and grief in itself, a pain and grief from an obvious and plain reading of the text, complicated by desire.

Complicated by desire. which in fact drives the woman back to the man despite the pain and despite his domination. You can run from it, you can act as if you live in a fairy tale land, but none of that is going to amount to a whole lot in light of the stark, harsh, even cruel realities with which you are faced in this world. Do I need to go over that again? The link between the serpent’s sentence and the woman’s sentence is the mention of the seed, and the production of the seed, mainly in children. which itself becomes a special occasion for pain and sorrow, in which pain and sorrow are multiplied. All of this complicated by desire, the woman’s desire, which drives the woman back to the man despite the pain and despite his domination of her.

Of course we know, and glory in the fact, that the woman’s pain and sorrow reaches its resolution in Christ, the true seed of the woman. And even now, this one that she has produced ministers to her by purifying her desire and rectifying the man’s dominion over her. The propriety of love and loving submission assert themselves afresh, as in the Church of Christ and through the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The war between the sexes is brought to an end.

The link between the woman’s sentence and the man’s sentence is precisely at the point of authority and rule. But note, too, that for the man there is sorrow. And though it’s not spoken of here in terms of the multiplication of sorrow and pain, that certainly is intended as you move from the curse that is spoken with respect to the woman and that now which is spoken with respect to the man. There is desire also in view, even though that desire is not specifically mentioned, and there is dominion in view, even though that dominion is not specifically mentioned. This is to say that there is parallel between the curse that comes upon the woman and the curse that has come upon the man because of the sin.

The sorrow and the grief rises within the man because of the desire that he has for the earth, and the fact that the earth itself will not submit to him now. The earth rather has dominion over him, and that becomes a matter of severe, even the most severe frustration. His desire is for the earth, The earth will not submit. He cannot have dominion. Rather, the earth has dominion over him and actually claims the victory, since, in fact, he returns to the ground and thus declares its own victory over him.

This then throws man’s life into the severest of crises. For not only is his labor jeopardized by this arrangement, his very existence is jeopardized by this. He will look out upon the face of the earth and he will conclude, my labor is striving after nothingness. My life is utter vanity. My existence, in fact, is for nothing. My life is futile. Emptiness and death are the conclusion of the matter.

But even here, the grace of God shines through. If there was grace to be perceived in the pronouncing of sentence upon the serpent, as Satan himself is perceived to be judged and the seed of the woman gains the triumph, if there is grace to be perceived in the judgment upon the woman, as even through her pain and sorrow the seed shall come that shall affect this victory Even here, now, with respect to the man, there is grace pushing itself through and pushing itself onto the consciousness of Adam and Eve. The severity of the judgment itself will minister kindness and grace to this couple and to humanity after them. For now it will become increasingly plain to them, if they will but see it, that the earth and life in this world cannot be end in themselves.

The earth by itself is a dead end. Life in this world is a dead end. We do not live for the sake of life in this world, neither do we live for this world. The Fall will minister even greater grace in convincing man, clearly, unmistakably, that he is not made for this creation. The creation knows it. The creation knows it.

What do you think the groaning of the creation spoken about in Romans 8 is all about? What do you think the creation is groaning for? Do you think the creation is groaning for a better day for itself? That’s not what the text says. It says that the creation is groaning for a better day for the sons of God. And what is that better day? We are told in the twenty-first verse of that eighth chapter, it is the deliverance into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God. That is what the creation is groaning for.

God having deliberately subjected the creation to futility, that man would not hope in the but see plainly that his hope was beyond this creation, namely in the glorification of the sons of God by root of, as is said in verse 23 in that 8th chapter, the resurrection of the body. is the resolution to the vanity that threatens man, that even gains canonical expression in the book of Ecclesiastes, facing man squarely with utter futility if in fact this world is all that there is. The sentences of the Lord read out are sentences in which we can hear the echoes of the day of the Lord and the most severe judgment.

Though questions severity and justice, but simultaneously Even here, the sweet refrain, the notes of eternal grace are sounding. All of this, unto the end, that you might know, that all things, even the Fall itself, works together for good, to them that love God, to those that are called according to his purpose. Convince us, Father, that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that we might marvel in the inexplicability of that grace, its depth, how it is beyond our comprehension. And yet, Lord, we who have now become the beneficiaries of that grace, Lord, would we not glory in you and declare our love for you? O Father, as we see the severities of your judgments, may we be warned. But also, Lord, as now these judgments are read out for us, at the beginning of history, may we perceive even there the song of grace, which means, of course, our redemption, which means, of course, that we are brought to the end for which you designed us and planned us even from all eternity. No, not a permanent residence in this world. but one in the world to come, in your very presence, in and through Jesus Christ.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.