Origins: The Beginning (Genesis 1–11)Sample

By Pastor Dan Hickling

“To the woman He said: ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’” Genesis 3:16 (NKJV)

Sin changes things! No matter what you’re taught to believe, regardless of what your friends and family tell you, despite the propaganda that pours through our various channels of entertainment, there will always be consequences for doing things that God says we shouldn’t.

No matter how we might try to redefine, repurpose, or reimagine things, if we knowingly cross a line that God has drawn for us, we will feel the effects, and they will be painful.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean God can’t or won’t forgive us. If the Bible tells us anything it’s that He can and will. Nothing we do to disobey Him is greater than His desire to forgive us and bring us into right relationship with Him. Look at Abraham, look at Jacob, look at Moses, look at David, look at Saul, look at Peter. 

Collectively, they committed just about every sin under the sun. But God’s grace was greater and that great grace extends to us as well. That being said, though the guilt of our sin does not remain before God, its practical consequences do. 

God forgave Adam and his wife for falling and introducing sin into the human experience. We see this in the fact that God made skins of clothing to cover their nakedness (Genesis 3:21), which foretold the message of the gospel, that a substitutionary sacrifice is necessary to cover mankind’s sin. Yet there were ongoing consequences for the forgiven sin. As seen above, the woman would now know pain unlike before. 

This ought to serve as a sobering reminder to all of us. Too often, we sin with the foreknowledge that God always stands ready to forgive us for whatever we may do. But at the same time, we are blind to the consequences that we will inevitably reap. Everything that He’s identified as sin is bad for us and is going to leave a mark one way or another: an image that will haunt us for years, a memory that’s hard to forget, a relationship that’s damaged, an ailment that didn’t have to exist.

Again, God is able to forgive and cleanse us of all sin. Yet at some point a wise child of God understands that his or her heavenly Father is warning them of certain things for a reason, and the scarring consequences are a large part of that reason. Don’t sin as if it won’t change things, because it will.    

DIG: What does sin always produce?

DISCOVER: What example do we see of this in this passage? What positive change can this truth produce in your life?

DO: Spend some time reading through 1 John 1–3 and 2 Timothy 2 today and reflect on what it says about living a mature, fully devoted Christian life.