After the creation of man and woman, God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:29-31). God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green green vegetable for food.” Killing of animals and eating of meat became part of human consumption later on in history after the fall. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. There was, therefore, nothing bad in that created world, no hunger, no struggle for existence, no suffering, and certainly no death. God created the earth and everything in it with one focus, that is, for the human kind to enjoy.
In the creation story of man, God is not working with dumb and inert material, He is working on something that can respond. Human creation is intelligent with the ability to communicate. That's why we feel loneliness when isolated. We yearn for relationship, love with each other and with the Creator. That shows that the creation has a purpose. Our life and our living has a purpose. If there is no purpose and meaning for our lives, nothing matters. Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator". Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead. If you don't believe that God has created you with beauty and goodness in mind, then everything in this world will become indifferent to you. If you understand that God has created you with a purpose to be good and beautiful, that is when your life becomes meaningful to you. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11). "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)
The devil comes into the garden in the form of a talking serpent. It was not just an animal, but a reasoning creature who can communicate with humans. I wonder why Eve was not surprised at a serpent speaking. Maybe it was a temptation that spoke through other subtle means. The story is that they they did communicate. It is the same devil who tempted Jesus in the desert with reasoning, denial and suggestions to become like God (Matthew 4, Luke 4). The devil speaks to us every moment of our lives through subtle means by denying the existence of sin. He denies the dangers of sin and suggests that there are advantages in that their eyes would be opened and they could have much more of the power and pleasure of contemplation than before.
Adam and Eve were stricken with the shame of guilt and lost their place in the garden and found themselves hiding from an omniscient and omnipotent creator. God comes calling out "Where are you?" Someone said, “All great questions are usually short” The One who spoke and the world came into being, the One who set the stars in their places and the sun in its course, the One who said to the ocean, this shall be your boundary, the almighty and all knowing God knew exactly where Adam and Eve were. But the question really was: “Adam, do you know where you are?”. It was a question that beckons an answer with the need for their acknowledgement. Sin is more than an act of disobedience. It is the state of mind where one loses sight of the identity of who you are and where you are in life. The lust of the flesh and the pride of life make us lose sight of our relationship between each other and also with the creator. The Greek word translated "sin" in the Bible is 'hamartano', literally meaning to miss the mark. Suppose a swimmer to cross English channel. You don’t win unless you get to the other shore. It doesn’t matter you gave up only feet from the shore, you still missed the mark.
When a guest is on his way to our home and calls from somewhere nearby to ask for directions, we usually ask him “Where are you”. That means if you know where you are then I can direct you to get here. It is an acknowledgement of their sin that God was asking for. They are now away from God. Only God can re-direct them to restoration. A missionary was jailed in the communist prison in Russia. The Jail guard and the missionary became friends. One day the guard asked “How are we to understand that God, the all-knowing, said to Adam: ‘Where are you?’“ The missionary answered the jailer, “Do you believe that the Scriptures are eternal and that every era, every generation, and every man is included in them?” “I believe this,” answered the jailer. The missionary said, “in every stage and phase of life, God asks every person, ‘Where are you in your world? So many years and days of those allotted to you have passed, and how far have you gotten in your world?’ God says something like this, ‘You have lived forty-six years. How far along are you?’“ When the jailer heard his exact age mentioned by the missionary he stood up shaken, placed his hand on the missionary’s hand and cried like a child, he repented of his past and accepted Christ.
We are all being asked this question every day, every moment of our lives. Where are you in life? God did not need to ask Adam where he was. It was Adam who needed to be asked; and God does not need to ask each one of us. It is each of us who needs to be asked. When we are asked by God together and alone to admit for good and ill where we are, He is asking us to render a spiritual accounting not of our careers but our compassion, not of our wealth but our wisdom, not of our gains but our gifts, not of our physical fitness but of the fitness of our souls. A ship cannot make its way through the seas without a compass, and we cannot make our way through life without being asked at the turn of each and every year, “Where are you?” That question, and our answer, create the moral agenda for our work in the days ahead. That question and our answer are meant to puncture the hidings, evasions, and self-deceptions that blind us both to the ways we have made progress and also to the ways we have fallen short. The main danger in this questioning is our desire, like Adam and Eve our ancestors, to hide rather than answer, to flee rather than face, to evade rather than accept responsibility for what we have done and for what we have left undone. Our lesson to be learned is the same lesson learned by Adam and Eve. Separation from God is pitiful. When we lose our connection with God, we become hopeless. Guilt can rob us of the joy and peace God had intended to rule in our hearts. The creation of perfect order has started the disorder and disintegration. It started slipping away from the purpose it was made for. A sad change! Before they had sinned, if they heard the voice of the Lord God coming towards them, they would have run to meet him, but now God was become a terror to them, and they became a terror to themselves.
God asked Eve, "What is this that you have done?" (v-13). Again this is a rhetorical question. God knows, but does she know? God was asking "Will you own your own fault?" Neither of them answers this fully. Adam lays all the blame upon his wife. He took it like a man. "The woman you gave me, to be with me as my companion, she gave me of the tree." He but tacitly blaming it on God himself. Eve lays all the blame upon the serpent; the serpent beguiled me. They saw the happiness they were fallen from, and the misery they were fallen into. they saw a law in their members warring against the law of their minds, and captivating them both to sin and death; they saw that they were naked, and they sewed or platted fig leaves together, and, to cover, at least, part of their shame one from another, made themselves aprons. They were made not to be ashamed of each other (Gen 2:25)
They thought they can fix the problem by covering themselves with plant leaves. The leaves will dry soon in the sun. They don’t last at all. But the creator God was gracious not to let them perish, that He made a garment of skin. This shows that there was a sacrifice done, of an animal. This sacrifice is the shadow of the redeeming sacrifice that God had planned through Jesus Christ, the spotless lamb of God, who died for our sins and clothed us with the robe of righteousness. No work or any effort on our part are like making garments out of fig leaves. They dry and wear off in the heat of fiery trials and tribulations of life.
Johnny and his sister Sally were visiting his grandparents on their farm. He was given a slingshot to play with. He practiced in the woods. As he was walking back he saw Grandma’s pet duck. Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck square in the head, and killed it. He was shocked and grieved. In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the wood pile, only to see his sister watching. Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing. After lunch the next day Grandma said, "Sally, let’s wash the dishes." But Sally said, "Grandma, Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen. Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck?" So Johnny did the dishes. Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing and Grandma said, "I’m sorry but I need Sally to help make supper." Sally just smiled and said, "Well, that’s all right because Johnny told me he wanted to help. She whispered again, "Remember the duck?" So Sally went fishing and Johnny stayed to help. After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally’s he finally couldn’t stand it any longer. He came to Grandma and confessed the he had killed the duck. Grandma knelt down, gave him a hug, and said, "Sweetheart, I know. You see, I was standing at the window and I saw the whole thing. But because I love you, I forgave you. I was just wondering how long you would let Sally make a prisoner of you." We long for freedom from self pity and self righteousness . We need freedom from the bondage of fear. The good news is that God has set a plan to set humanity from the bondage of guilt and shame. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1:9)
Human sin (pride of life) destroyed the nature of mankind and the rest of the creation, losing our compatibility. It is still destroying the beauty of the nature. Pride is centered on self centeredness. Because we are selfish, we fight nature. We fight nature and nature fights us. God's handiwork is in distress, but God is in control. The whole creation is enslaved under what the Bible calls "the bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21). In fact, we see "that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now" (Romans 8:22). It is certainly not the "very good" creation that God created any more. Through Jesus Christ, God makes everything entirely new, redeems what is broken and restores what was lost.
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