Adam and Eve had it made! They were living in what we’d consider a utopia. The Garden of Eden. They had each other, the freshest vegan diet, and animals to play with, and they were to have kids and populate the earth with God’s own image. Too bad, they blew it. All they had to do was stay away from one tree. But, no. Enter Satan, the devil, Lucifer, disguised as a snake to tempt Eve. One wrong choice and they destroyed their utopia. Let’s dig in…
Genesis 3 – The Fall
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity (hostility)
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3 NLT
Choices Have Consequences
Here are some Points to Ponder…
- God gave Adam and Eve free will with one simple don’t.
- God tells them that everything they need is here. They didn’t need the fruit of that tree.
- Satan tempts Eve with the top 3 enticements. Check out Luke 4 to see how Satan tempts Jesus with the same.
- Lust of the flesh — good to eat
- Lust of the eyes — it looked good
- Pride of life — they could be like God
- Eve was to be Adam’s helper, with Adam being the lead. Here, Eve takes the lead.
- Adam, instead of following and obeying God, follows his wife.
- Adam and Eve were saying that God is not enough. They wanted to BE God.
- They did gain some knowledge — that they were sinners.
- Then they felt ashamed, naked, and afraid of God.
- God Curses
- the Snake
- Eve – and all women
- Adam – and all men
- The devastating consequences of their disobedience brought on…
- Pain in childbirth as well as the monthly “curse” for all women — yeah, blame Eve for that one!
- Having to toil to make a living
- Weeds
- Sin
- Eventual physical death for them as well as every future human being
- The first animal sacrifice for clothing.
- The infamous phrase, “The Devil Made Me Do It”
No Excuses!
“The devil made me do it” is not an excuse! Sin is serious. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s simple “don’t”, sin entered the world. Their lives — and ours — were forever changed.
Why do bad things happen in the world?
Why is there evil in the world? Evil is the absence of God. Just like Adam and Eve took the bait, they wanted to be like God, so do we humans today. They wanted to know it all, to be able to do it all — that’s what we want! With the eating of the forbidden fruit, they gave Satan a foothold in the world of humankind.
We, Adam and Eve’s offspring, fight Satan’s evil every day, as part of God’s curse. However, there is Good News! There is a promise here of hope through God’s Gift of Grace.
God’s Plan to Save the World Through His Grace
Jesus, Eve’s offspring, seed, child, and descendant will crush Satan! That is the promise that comes with the curse.
Where is the Gospel?
It is truly amazing that only three chapters into the Bible, we already have an explicit promise of God’s plan to save the world through what we now know as the Gospel.
That is because the promised child of Eve is none other than Jesus. He is the one who crushed Satan’s head by taking the curse of sin off of us and onto himself. Furthermore, Jesus overcame the death earned in the garden by rising from the grave.
Jesus not only reversed the curse earned by sin, he also gives us a way to conquer sin in our lives. Unlike Eve, we fight sin by trusting that Jesus is enough. He has done enough, provided enough, and will always be enough. You can stop trying to earn it. Satan’s head is already crushed.
Spoken Gospel (emphasis mine)
By the way, Eve is NOT Mary! Whoever came up with that idea was a false teacher! (Did Deeper into Catholic Church False Doctrine)
The Curse is Lifted!
We see that in the Book of Revelation. Isn’t it nice of God to give us a look into the future?
A New Heaven and a New Earth!
Furthermore, Eden, Utopia, will be revived as will the Tree of Life. We get it all back!
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
Revelation 22:1-5 NLT
But there’s a caveat… Jesus said…
7 “Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Revelation 21:7-8 NLT
It’s Your Choice
Just like Adam and Eve had free will, you do, too. You have a rather simple choice as to where YOU spend eternity — Heaven or hell.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John 3:17 NLT
Through Jesus!
Do you hear Jesus knocking at the door to your heart? Why don’t you let Him in?
