Rebellion and Redemption: Expulsion from Eden

 

 

Like labor pains, the signs of Christ's return are increasing in severity and intensity, including wars, rumors of wars, famine, disease, earthquakes in unusual places, Christian persecution, false doctrine and false teachers, and hatred of others, even the unnatural lack of love for one's own flesh and blood (Matthew 24). All these evils can be traced back to the curse of sin on humanity and on the earth because of Adam and Eve's disobedience to God. Yet praise God, He opened the plan of redemption to whosoever would trust in Jesus Christ His Son (John 3:16), giving us a living hope even in these dark, perilous times. I therefore thought it would be appropriate to repost this from the archives.

The overarching theme of the Bible is that of a perfectly loving, holy and just God creating, sustaining and redeeming His rebellious children. Because He is completely holy, He cannot allow sin into His presence (Leviticus 11:45). Because He is righteous and just, He cannot allow sin to go unpunished (1 Kings 8:32; Psalm 7:11). And because He is love (1 John 4:8), He gave His only Son to pay the punishment for our sins, so that he could shower His children with His infinite mercy and grace (2 John 1:3) and give them eternal life in His presence.

Despite the idyllic, blissful life God provided for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, where they enjoyed the beauty of His creation, one another, and fellowship with Him (Genesis 1-4), they rebelled against Him.

Satan, in the form of a wise, beautiful and subtle serpent, resorted to his favorite ploy – starting with God’s truth and twisting it into a lie (Genesis 3: 1–3), for he is the father of lies (John 8:44). Eve was deceived and succumbed to the three temptations that are Satan’s signature strategies: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (Genesis 3:5-6; 1 John 2:16).

Before the fall, Adam and his wife were innocent and trusted God, as proven by their obedience. When they disobeyed and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they committed the first sin – rebellion against God’s commandment (Genesis 3:7). They lost fellowship with God and were afraid of Him because they knew they had done wrong (v.:8-10).

Before they had been unashamed of their nudity, as husband and wife should lovingly delight in one another in the sanctity of marriage (Hebrews 13:4). But after their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked and made a pitiful attempt to hide themselves with fig leaves (Genesis 3: 7)

God in His mercy gives Adam ample opportunity to confess (v. 9-11), for when we confess our sins, He is swift to forgive us (1 John 1:9). But instead, Adam and Eve both play the blame game. Adam has the audacity to blame God for giving him Eve, and he then tries to avoid guilt by blaming his wife (Genesis 3: 12). Not that Eve is any better – rather than taking responsibility for her disobedience, she blames the serpent (v. 13). 

Sadly, variations of this scenario are too often repeated, even to the present day. This results not only in failed marriages and relationships, but also in worldwide conflict and even war when rulers refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. Rather than acknowledge their own fault, criminals often blame a failed system or their dysfunctional family for their wrongdoing, which is a major obstacle to rehabilitation.

After Adam and Eve's sin, God first cursed the serpent (v. 14). Before he beguiled Eve, the serpent had feet and walked, but after he was condemned to slither along the ground (v.14). But the true object of God’s wrath is not the serpent that Satan used to tempt Eve, but Satan himself. Since Lucifer’s sin of pride led to his fall from Heaven, he has been the enemy of mankind – looking to kill and destroy (1 Peter 5:8). And the devil is the enemy of the seed of the woman – Jesus Christ, Who ultimately defeats Satan. But first Satan bruises His heel at the cross (Genesis 3 15).

The curse for Eve’s sin is the pain of childbirth and her subjection to her husband (v. 16; Ephesians 5: 20-25), and Adam’s curse is that he must work hard to eat (Genesis 3 17-18) until the day he dies. Sin brought with it the curse not only of hard physical labor, but of physical death (v. 19; Romans 6:23), including eternal spiritual death for those alienated from God.

But the promise of redemption was there in Eve’s seed (Genesis 3: 20). Many generations later, God’s own Son would take on human flesh (John 1:14), be born to Mary – one of Eve’s descendants -- and bring eternal life to all Who trust in His death, burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only way to Heaven (John 14:6). 

Through His grace and sacrifice, believers are made righteous and freely receive eternal life (Romans 5: 17-19).

The first death occurred in the garden when God killed animals to clothe Adam and Eve with their skins (Genesis 3:21), which symbolized covering, but not removing, their sin, through shed blood. Thus began the “scarlet thread” (Joshua 2:18) of redemption by the blood woven throughout Bible history. The shedding of animal blood for sacrifices commanded by God covered the sins of His people, but only temporarily (Leviticus 4; 3-7).

Not until the perfect Sacrifice of Jesus Christ Himself would believers be washed clean in His blood (Revelation 1:5), their sins removed as far from them as is the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12). through His completed work on the cross.

Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they were marred by the sin of disobedience. If they would eat the tree of life, they would live forever in their sinful, corrupt bodies and would be doomed to hell for all eternity (Genesis 3:22). God had to prevent that so that they and their descendants could ultimately have eternal life in Heaven, so He expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and placed angels with flaming swords at its entrance to guard the tree of life (v.23-24).

Milllennia later, God will finally give His children access to the tree of life. Thanks to His plan of salvation through His Son, those who are born again will ultimately escape their sin-stained bodies and receive glorified bodies that will never age or become sick. In Heaven, in the New Jerusalem, we will eat fruit from the tree of life and its leaves will keep us from getting sick (Revelation 2:7; 22:2,14).

May we lead our lives not in rebellion, but in submission to His perfect will, so that we will ultimately taste the fruit of the tree of life and live forever in His presence!

© 2013 Laurie Collett

Edited, expanded and reposted from the archives

What If?

 

This morning, as my husband and I were reading our daily devotionals, he posed the interesting question, “What if, once Adam and Eve had sinned, they confessed their sin to God and asked for His forgiveness? Would that have eliminated the curse of sin and death?

As we know from Scripture, Adam and Eve’s first reaction was not to repent, ask for forgiveness, and seek restoration of their fellowship with God, even though they had known the blissful existence of perfect peace and joy, intimate fellowship with God in the garden, and every blessing one could ever imagine, all lovingly provided by God’s grace (Genesis 1-2).

Quite the contrary. Once they had eaten the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6), lost their innocence, and realized they were naked, they tried to hide from God’s presence and to cover up their sin by sewing aprons of fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). (If you’ve ever seen a dry fig leaf, which crumbles if you even look at it askance, you’ll know how futile that was!)

Once God confronted them (Genesis 3:8-11), things went from bad to worse. Rather than admitting their disobedience and begging God for His forgiveness, they played the blame game. Adam, whom God had designated as the spiritual head of his household (Genesis 2:18-25), should have taken responsibility for his wife’s transgression, and certainly should not have followed her in her rebellion. Instead, Adam blamed Eve for tasting the forbidden fruit, and even worse, he indirectly blamed God, as the One Who had given Eve to him as his wife (Genesis 3:12).

Not to be outmaneuvered, Eve blamed the serpent for having deceived her (Genesis 3:13), rather than owning up to her weakness as she yielded to the temptation of lust of the eyes (the tree was pleasant to look at), lust of the flesh (the fruit would surely taste good), and pride of life (the devil’s lie that eating the fruit would make them wise so that they would become gods themselves; Genesis 3:6; 1 John 2:16).

As far as we know in Scripture, Adam and Eve did not repent of their sin before God pronounced judgment. Eve and her successors would now experience great pain in childbirth and submission to their husbands (Genesis 3:16), while Adam and his offspring would have to labor intensely to provide their food from the sin-cursed ground (Genesis 3:17-19).

And yet, we later see some evidence that the hearts of Adam and Eve turned back to God, for Eve believed in God’s promise that her seed would one day defeat the devil (Genesis 3:15; 4:1,25). Once God had expelled Adam and Eve from the garden (Genesis 3:22-24), they must have taught their children what God had told them about the need for animal sacrifice to please Him. Abel brought such an offering to God, even though his brother Cain rebelled and pridefully offered crops he had worked hard to grow (Genesis 4:2-16).

So what if Adam and Eve had immediately repented of their sin and begged God for mercy? Would that have reversed all the dire consequences: expulsion from the garden, physical death and sin nature as the new destiny for all mankind, pain in childbirth, and sorrow in eking out a living?

We know that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse from unrighteousness, if we confess them (1 John 1:9). There is no sin so heinous that it cannot be forgiven, thanks to Jesus Christ paying our sin debt in full (Hebrews 10:10-14). Whosoever, whether Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler, trusts in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way to Heaven (John 14:6) will be saved to eternal life (John 3:16).

And yet we cannot escape the consequences of our sin. God gave us free will to choose to accept or reject His Son, and to obey or disobey His commandments. Either way, there are consequences – blessings or curses.

Imagine a saved man who flies into a jealous rage upon discovering his wife in another man’s bed. Without thinking, he picks up a heavy vase and bashes in her skull. Immediately he is filled with grief and genuine remorse, realizes how wrong his actions were, and pleads with God to forgive him and accept him back into fellowship with Him.

Surely God will forgive him. He will not lose his salvation, and God will restore their broken fellowship (John 10:29; Romans 8:35-39). Yet the consequences of his sin remain. His wife will not be resurrected from the dead, nor will he escape legal punishment for murder.

Sometimes the consequences of our sin are delayed, yet they relentlessly pursue us until they are fulfilled. Consider a long-time alcoholic who gets saved; realizes that he has been sinning by abusing his body, which is now God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17); and asks God to forgive him. From that day on he remains sober and glorifies God through his testimony and witness to others who struggle with addiction.

Yet one day, as he gazes into the mirror, he notices a sallow tint to his complexion. Tests and doctor’s visits soon reveal that he is dying from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. Could he rightfully blame God for allowing this consequence of his former sin to finally catch up with him? I believe not, for God is holy and just, and there are inevitable consequences of breaking His laws.

Back to Adam and Eve. Had they asked God for forgiveness and sincerely repented, seeking His face instead of running away and blaming others, I believe He would have forgiven them and immediately restored their close relationship with Him and with one another. Yet He still would have had to address their disobedience by judging their sin. He had warned them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for if they ate it, they would surely die (Genesis 2:17).

God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and even if Adam and Eve had immediately confessed, the punishment of physical death could not be taken off the table. God in His infinite knowledge and wisdom (Psalm 139:1-6) knew from before the beginning of time that man would disobey Him, and He had the perfect plan to restore mankind by sending His Son to pay for our sins, so that all who trust Him would have eternal life (John 3:16).

Even if Adam and Eve repented, death still would have entered the garden and the world, starting with the animal God slew to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness (Genesis 3:21). Yet God showed the first instance of His repeated cycle of judgment and mercy. He softened the blow of physical death, pain and sorrow by expelling them from the garden before they could eat of the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24). Had they done so, they would have been doomed to live forever in a sin-corrupted world in sin-corrupted bodies.

The second such recorded cycle was when Cain took out his anger at God not accepting his offering by killing Abel, his brother. God judged Cain for his sin of fratricide by removing his farming prowess and making him a fugitive and vagabond. Yet in His mercy, God marked Cain to warn others not to slay him (Genesis 4:2-16).

I believe Adam and Eve were saved despite their transgression, for they knew and trusted God before the fall, and their words and actions after the fall showed their faith in His plan. So, like the rest of us who are saved, they would have to cope with sin’s consequences, but once their earthly life ended, they enjoyed eternal life in Heaven.

Praise God that in His mercy, He not only forgives our sins and restores our fellowship with Him, but He gives eternal, abundant life to all who trust Him!

© 2023 Laurie Collett

Eden’s Triplets of Mercy: Sin, Judgment and Redemption

As we have seen throughout Scripture, God’s Word expresses His Triune Nature as Father, Son and Holy Spirit by clustering significant concepts, people and objects in groups of three. Some of the earliest triplet patterns occur in Genesis 2, with the description of the Garden of Eden introducing the central.theme of the Bible. Man is sinful and deserves God’s judgment, but God’s mercy saves him.

This garden was Paradise on earth, created by God for man’s enjoyment (v. 8). God filled the garden with three types of trees: every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (v. 9).

Through the first two types of trees, God blessed man with beautiful scenery, delicious food, and the promise of perfect life free of aging, illness or pain. The third tree of knowledge of good and evil was a test of man’s faith, submission and obedience. Adam and Eve failed that test by doubting God’s Word, pridefully seeking their own desires rather than pleasing God, and disobeying His commandment (Genesis 3:1-6).

Their rebellion led to guilt (v.7, 10), loss of fellowship with God (v. 10) and suffering the consequences of God’s judgment. This included a threefold curse on the serpent (v. 14-15), on Adam (v. 17-19), and on Eve (v. 16). But God in His mercy restored fellowship by seeking them out as they hid from Him (v.9), covered their sin with animal skins (v. 21), and expelled them from the Garden (v. 22-24).

Although the expulsion from Eden was part of the judgment and consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin, it was also an act of mercy. Had God permitted them to remain in the Garden of Eden, they could have eaten from the tree of life (v. 22). This would have given them eternal life, which would be more of a curse than a blessing. They would have lived forever in their fallen state, continuing to experience the endless toil of physical labor (v. 17-19), the strife of relationships broken by sin (v. 16), and sorrow (v. 16-17).

Instead, God in His mercy had them leave. The duration of their physical life ravaged by sin would be limited (v. 19), and God would give Eve a son whose descendant would bruise Satan’s head (v. 15).  In so doing, God began His perfect plan of redemption, not only for Adam and Eve, but for everyone who would believe in His Son as Deliverer, Lord and Saviour (John 3:16; 1 Timothy 1:1; 2 Peter 1:11). The animal skins with which God clothed Adam and Eve required the shedding of blood, foreshadowing the shed blood of Christ, the perfect Sacrifice Who cleansed us from all our sins, past, present and future  (Romans 5:9; Revelation 1:5).

God watered the Garden of Eden with four rivers defining three lands or countries: Havilah, Ethiopia, and Assyria (Genesis 2:11, 13, 14). Based on current geography, it is difficult to determine from this description the exact former location of the Garden of Eden, as the global flood in Noah’s day would have considerably altered the terrain.

Through their future inhabitants, these three lands remind us of man’s sin, God’s judgment, and His restoration. Havilah was a source of three treasures: gold, bdellium and onyx (v.12). But it also was the dwelling place of Israel’s enemies: the sons of Ishmael (Genesis 25:16-18), as well as the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:7)

Ishmael represents the consequences of man taking matters into his own hands, rather than trusting God and waiting on the Lord’s perfect timing. God had promised to give Abram (Abraham) and Sarai (Sarah) a natural born son in their barren old age; to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars; and to give him the Promised Land to inherit (Genesis 15:1-7). As part of a sign to Abraham confirming this promise, God asked him for an offering of three beasts: a heifer, a she goat, and a ram, each three years old (v. 9).

Had Abram and Sarai only waited for God’s perfect timing, they would not have sinned before they heard the rest (and best) of the promise: God would make Abraham the father of many nations, He would be God to him and his descendants, and he and his descendants would possess the land of Canaan forever (Genesis 17:4-8).

But Sarah accused the Lord of keeping her from childbearing, violated God’s plan for marriage by giving her maid Hagar to Abraham, and persuaded him to have a child by her. Because of Ishmael, the son of this adulterous liaison, Hagar hated Sarah, Sarah wanted to be rid of Hagar, and Abraham was caught in the middle (Genesis 16:2-6).

God promised to make Ishmael the father of innumerable descendants (v. 10), just as He did for Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s promised son born after Ishmael. But unlike Isaac, Ishmael would be a curse, and not a blessing, to Israel, for he would be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him (v. 12). The world today is still reeling from the impact of radical Islamists tracing their roots back to Abraham through Ishmael. 

The Amalekites, also inhabitants of Havilah, were another thorn in Israel’s side. As the Hebrews fled from Egypt, Amalek attacked them in a fierce battle at Rephidim. Israel prevailed while Moses prayed, assisted by Aaron and Hur (Exodus 17:10-12). God swore that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation (v. 16).

God used the Amalekites and Canaanites as an instrument of His judgment against the Hebrews for complaining about Him, lacking faith in His promise by believing an evil report about the Promised Land, and planning to disobey Him by returning to Egypt (Numbers 14). The judgment was threefold: they would be struck by pestilence and the sword; the adults would die in the wilderness (except for Joshua and Caleb who brought a good report); and the children would wander in the wilderness for 40 years before entering the Promised Land.

As severe as this sounds, it was a lesser punishment than they deserved for their lack of faith despite God’s faithfulness, His signs demonstrating His great power, and the report from Joshua and Caleb of the land flowing with milk and honey. But God pardoned them (v. 20), for He is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression (v. 18).

The Amalekites continued to threaten Israel (Judges 3:13; 6:3, 7:12), and God commanded King Saul to kill every one of their people, herds and flocks (1 Samuel 15:1-3). But Saul disobeyed God by sparing the life of their king and the best of the livestock. This sin cost Saul dearly, for God judged him by taking away his kingship (1 Samuel 15:7-35). Yet He restored a Godly king to Israel by selecting and anointing David (1 Samuel 16:1-13), a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) who ultimately defeated the Amalekites (1 Samuel 31).

Because of God’s great mercy, He does not give us what we deserve, namely eternal punishment in hell, for we are all sinners (Romans 3:23; 6:23). His holiness, perfection and justice (1 Samuel 2:2) demand that sin be punished, but He reconciled us to Himself by the atoning sacrifice of His Son (Romans 5:10-11), Who was crucified, buried, and rose again on the third day so that all who trust Him have everlasting life (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

We see God’s mercy daily (Lamentations 3:22-23,32) as He works all things together for our good (Romans 8:28), protects us from the full consequences of our transgressions, and gives blessings to mitigate the judgment He requires. Sometimes He allows us go through trials, knowing that they will strengthen our faith, conform us to the image of His Son, and equip us to help others going through similar trials by giving us compassion, wisdom and experience,

Like Havilah, the other two lands comprising the Garden of Eden, namely Ethiopia and Assyria, also have lessons for us regarding man’s sin, God’s judgment, and His restoration, as we shall see next week. Praise God that even from the beginning, He knew that man would sin, requiring judgment, but that He had a plan to redeem us! 

© 2015 Laurie Collett