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In The Beginning – Adam and Eve

by Chris Simmons

In the sixth day of creation, God, after having made everything in the heavens and the earth, then created man in His image to rule over all of His creation. From man, God formed his help-meet, woman, and then placed them in the garden. From thence, the history of all man unfolds including countless examples of success and failure, righteousness and sin, truth and error that we are wise to learn from. But what are we to learn and apply from what happened to Adam and Eve “in the beginning” ? What lessons are we to carry with us from the first days of man?

We learn that God’s will is understandable. God’s directions were clear – “from any tree of the garden you may eat freely” with the single exception of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” which they were prohibited from partaking of (Genesis 2:16). The instructions were clear enough that when the serpent asked Eve about what restrictions God had placed upon the fruit of the garden, Eve clearly and accurately repeated what God had told them (Genesis 3:1-3). God, as Creator of all, is most definitively able to communicate His will to man in a clear and understandable manner. Paul noted in Ephesians 3:3-5, “that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. And by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.” We are commanded to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17) and God has never asked man to do anything that is impossible to do. That’s not to say that we won’t have to “be diligent” (II Tim. 2:15) and work hard at studying God’s word and we might need to work with other sound Christian brethren to ask questions (Acts 8:30-31) – but it can and must be done.

We also learn from Adam and Eve that one of Satan’s primary tactics is to be the accuser of both God and man. After Eve repeated God’s instructions to the serpent, the serpent replied that the reason God made that rule was to keep man from being as wise as God and that what God defined as the consequences of eating the fruit (death) was simply untrue (Gen. 3:4-5). In the book of Revelation we read that being an “accuser” of the children of God is a primary activity of Satan. Revelation 12:10, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.” An example of Satan’s efforts to accuse man before our Father in heaven can be seen in the book of Job when Satan accuses Job before God of being “blameless and upright” only because God had “made a hedge about him” and that if those blessings were taken away that Job would curse God (Job 1:8-12). Satan’s accusations proved not to be true as he is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44) but we, seeing his scheming efforts can’t afford to be ignorant (II Corinthians 2:11).

We also learn that Satan’s deceptive devices include the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and man’s pride of life. We read in I John 2:15-16, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” With Adam and Eve, the lust of the flesh was seen in the serpent pointing out how the fruit of the forbidden tree was a “delight to the eyes.” The lust of the flesh was seen in the serpent’s efforts to focus their attention on the fact that “the tree was good for food.” The boastful pride of life was in the serpent’s false accusations that the fruit was “desirable to make one wise” and would make them “like God.” These are the same forms of temptations Satan used against Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) and they are the foundation for the same deceitful devices he seeks to use against us today.

Another lesson to be learned from Adam and Eve is that man has a choice. God created man with the ability to choose and Adam and Eve faced the decision to submit to God’s will or to succumb to the serpent’s deception and lies. God desires man to submit to Him but it must be a choice and an exercise of our will to do so. We are to “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15) but choose we must. We cannot go on “limping between the two sides” (I Kings 18:21, ASV) but must, by our words and actions, choose to present ourselves as servants of someone (Romans 6:16).

Adam and Eve remind us of the need to learn to accept responsibility for our actions. When confronted by God in the garden, Adam, rather than accepting responsibility, first blamed his wife Eve for his sin. Eve in turn blamed the serpent. Neither of them accepted responsibility and simply answered as they should have, “I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight” as the prodigal son did upon returning to his father (Luke 15:21). Rather, they followed the path of excuse making that countless people yet today follow. No one is ever responsible for what they do anymore. Aaron tried to claim that he wasn’t responsible (he blamed “the people” who he said were “prone to do evil” ) for the golden calf he made while Moses tarried on Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:21-24). Saul wouldn’t claim responsibility for failing to follow God’s command to utterly destroy the Amalekites but again blamed “the people” for his sin (I Samuel 15:10-21).

We desperately need to learn from Adam and Eve that there are severe consequences to sinful choices. It cost them, above all else, fellowship with God. God had told them that in the day they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that they would surely die and spiritually they did for the wages of sin is certainly death (Romans 3:23). They were both driven from the garden, never to have access again (Genesis 3:22-24). No longer with access to the tree of life, physical death was now certain to be part of their future and the future of all men. Because of their sin, consequences were placed upon both man and woman including the pain of childbirth and submission to their husbands for the woman and the toil and sweat by which man would now have to toil and labor for his sustenance. The consequences for unrepented sin are indeed ominous for man today as we are promised eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord (II Thessalonians 1:7-9). I’m convinced that the example of the death of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 for their sin of lying should provoke our hearts to contemplate, that though we live by faith under the law of Christ, the consequences of sin are just as serious as they were for Adam and Eve. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!” (Romans 6:1-2).

Adam did not bring about spiritual death for all man. Each one of us dies spiritually because we each have rebelled against God. Ezekiel states in Ezekiel 18:20, The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity.” Paul stated in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Our spiritual death is due to our sin and no one else. Adam and Even were simply the first in a long line of sinners.

When we consider the serious consequences of sin, we also need to be reminded by Adam and Eve that we cannot hide from God. They tried to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord in the garden but God knew not only where they were but what was in their hearts. We must remember what is recorded by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 17:10, “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” Jonah learned that there is nowhere we can go to flee from God’s presence (Psalms 139:1-12; Jonah 1:3).

Quickly, we need to make the point that in studying about Adam and Eve, we understand that God has forever defined the roles and responsibilities of man and woman and He has defined the relationship man and woman may have together. One man and one woman, for life. That is how God defined it in the beginning and that’s how our Lord said it is to be (Matthew 19:4-6).

Finally, despite the severe consequences of their sin, we learn from the account in Genesis chapter 3 that God had a plan from the very beginning – yes, before the foundation of the world – to redeem man from his sin. For in the curse God pronounced upon the serpent, He gave hope when He said “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” (Genesis 3:15). The reference to the “seed of woman” is a prophetic reference to Jesus Christ who would inflict the crushing blow upon Satan when He would overcome death and give us the victory over sin and death.

So many important lessons for us to learn “in the beginning.”

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