One rule. That was the blissful and uncomplicated life that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden. But it doesn’t stay that way, because of a crafty talking serpent with legs, hanging out in the garden, tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent cunningly rewords it: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” In other words, ‘God is trying to starve you. God is telling you that every tree is off limits. Did God really say that?’
Eve comes back with exactly the right answer: ‘Silly serpent, we can eat from any tree we like, including the Tree of Life, but we can’t eat of that tree in the middle of the garden, we can’t even touch it, because we would die.’ But day after day, she and Adam go to the tree, every day they hear the snake tempting them to do the one thing God told them not to do. And he entices them with the idea that this fruit will make them like God.
Enjoying the third consecutive showing of Frozen at the holidays, my two-year-old granddaughter reached up to the box of Ferro-Rocher chocolates next to Grandpa’s recliner, and seeing her, her watchful mother said, “No. You can’t have Papaw’s chocolate.” The child obediently removed her hand from the box. As soon as her mother’s back was turned, however, the child’s gaze went longingly to the box of chocolates, and seeing that they were a delight to the eye and good for food, she grabbed one. Taking it across the room she climbed under the card table – just a card table with no tablecloth – and glancing up she saw me watching her, so she said, “Shhhhh! I’m hiding.” Cramming the chocolate into her mouth she downed it in two seconds, coming out from her “hiding” place with melted chocolate on her hands and face. Being a good grandmom and unwilling to put her to shame, I cleaned her face and hands, and removed the temptation from her reach. Little did she know that she was playing out in miniature exactly the sin of our first parents, and their feeble attempts to hide and equivocate about what was obvious to God. Snake bit. We’re all snake bit.
As soon as Adam and Eve eat the fruit, everything is shattered. When God comes strolling through the Garden, they try to cover their nakedness and hide, but God knows. Then they start the blame game, blaming God, the serpent, and each other. Relationships with God, the creation, and each other are now broken. God places judgements on them all: serpent loses his legs, Adam’s work is turned into hard toil, Eve will have pain in childbirth, and the equality of male and female is ruptured.
Sin has entered the creation. We call this event, “The Fall” because it forever damaged us and our environment. It also brought death into the world, because as soon as they sin, God kicks the humans out of the garden and blocks their access to the Tree of Life. Their bodies start to age, they will no longer enjoy the immortality and perfect health that has been their privilege, and they will die. Results? From our first parents we inherit two unsolvable human problems: sin and death. Sin separates us from God because God is holy; death separates us from God because God is eternal. Sin was our doing, death is God’s. Death is a severe mercy; God blesses us with death so that we don’t have to live forever in sin, there is an expiration date to our sinfulness. While we live in this broken, sinful world, we have no power in ourselves to fix our problems of sin and death. But there is a promise in Genesis 3:15, that one day the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent’s head, a prophecy of salvation. As we learned back on Day 3, God saves!
Prayer: LORD GOD, we thank You that even before our problems of sin and death infected our lives and our world, You already had a solution. Help us come to Your throne with our needs, our brokenness, our sinful hearts, and to find Your salvation there. In Jesus’ name, amen.