10/26/22

I did it again the other day. In fact, I do it so often, I don’t really think about it anymore. Paying a utility bill online and a statement appears with a box to click: “I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions . . .” I never read that stuff. Well, I did once and it was such confusing legal mumbo-jumbo, I had a hard time making sense of all the fine print . . . so now I just click on it. It’s turned out ok . . . so far.

People make choices and choices have consequences. Whenever the tempter comes along and offers us some grand temptation, there’s always a fine print that we fail to read. That was certainly true of the first sin of the man and the woman in the garden.

“Your eyes will be opened,” the serpent grandly promised, “and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Well, that sounds great, doesn’t it!

But the fine print . . .

What does it mean to “know good and evil”? The Hebrew word for “know” is yada, and it means to know something through experiencing it. It’s the word for the intimacy of a man and woman. It’s more than just a head knowledge; it is to experience something. Intimately.

That first man and woman already knew the “good.” Everything in their experience was good. They lived in a perfect world, created by a perfect God, who gave them a perfect job in a perfect world they experienced with a perfect spouse. On top of that, they were already “like God,” having been created in his image, after his likeness.

Over half of what the tempter offered, they already experienced.

But the knowledge of evil - the experience of evil . . . that was new.

The serpent was right about one thing, though; their eyes were certainly open. They now saw themselves in a way they had never seen before. They are awakened to self: self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-concern and selfishness. And I’m certain that ripping off fig leaves to cover themselves was not part of tending and keeping the garden. Every little detail of this story points to the drastic change in the human experience.

When questioned by God, the man responds, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” What word is repeated over and over? “I” with a “myself ” tossed in. And where did they learn words like “afraid. . . naked . . . hid”? This new experience called for a new vocabulary, and none of it was good.

And the man keeps digging himself deeper into a hole: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Not only does he try to shift the blame on the woman, but he also blames God! “The woman whom you gave. . .” Rather than accepting blame, he, like a child caught in mischief, tried to excuse himself, when the truth is that instead of listening to God, the man listened to the woman and the woman listened to the serpent.

Even before God pronounces the sentence on them, we already see the result of sin. The serpent’s grand offer of a bigger and better life didn’t mention fear and a loss of love. Intimacy turns into enmity between the first couple and between humanity and God, and between the first humans and the creature.

And now the fine print, the consequences of their disobedience: the serpent is cursed; the woman has increased pain in childbirth; the ground is cursed for the man, and in his toil in finding food, he will share the woman’s experience of pain (“in toil you shall eat of it” is literally “in pain you shall eat of it”). Finally, human destiny is changed: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The beautiful, perfect world God created is now a perfect mess. And the greatest loss is being driven out from the presence of God: “therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken.”

However, God does not give up on his creation! As I’ve often said, God could easily have destroyed them and started over again – after all, who would have known? But God doesn’t! God’s first act is to do what they could not do for themselves; he clothes them in skins. More than one author has pointed out that this is the first shedding of blood to cover humanity’s sin.

There will be redemption for God’s fallen creatures! There is a long, tortuous path to get there – long and tortuous because of humanity’s continued stubbornness and disobedience. But, redemption does come from the “seed of the woman,” a woman who will give birth to the “last Adam” – Jesus. The apostle Paul would later write in I Corinthians 15:21-22, “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ!”

And it is no accident that, if you look at the other end of the Bible, our story ends up in a garden – an Eden-like paradise, with a tree of life yielding its fruit for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2).

Yes, it’s a long road to get to redemption, but it’s a fascinating story, and we’re exploring that road together on Wednesday evenings. Genesis 1-11 gives us the problem; Genesis 12-Revelation 22 gives us the solution. Come! Join us on the journey!

Blessings!
Pastor Terry