As we move on from the story of Adam and Eve, it is worthwhile to note that it was God who was seeking out Adam in the cool of the evening. Let us look briefly at that passage beginning in Genesis 3:8-19.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in
the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from
the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him,
"Where are you?"
So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden,
and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
And He said, "Who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not
eat?"
Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be
with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."
And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this
you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I
ate."
So the LORD God said to the serpent:
"Because you have done this,
You are
cursed more than all cattle,
And more
than every beast of the field;
On your
belly you shall go,
And you
shall eat dust
All the
days of your life.
And I will put
enmity
Between you
and the woman,
And between
your seed and her Seed;
He shall
bruise your head,
And you
shall bruise His heel."
To the woman He said:
"I
will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you
shall bring forth children;
Your desire
shall be for your husband,
And he
shall rule over you."
Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded
the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you,
saying, "You shall not eat of it':
"Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you
shall eat of it
All the
days of your life.
Both thorns
and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you
shall eat the herb of the field.
In the
sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you
return to the ground,
For out of
it you were taken;
For dust
you are,
And to dust
you shall return."
As the Lord God was walking in the cool of the day, Adam and Eve knew something was wrong with their relationship, fellowship, communion with God. So they hid out in the forest.
Then after GodŐs call, Adam replies that he is naked and afraid to face God in his nakedness. What follows is the first presentation of law and gospel in the Bible. God has His standards of conduct. If you, your obedience, do not meet those standards of conduct there are consequences to pay.
Adam understands this quite well even before God speaks to him. He and Eve have lost their communion with God, as well the personal freedom to develop their gifts in line with GodŐs plan. Put another way, their new found independence from God has cost them a magnitude of potential.
The United States tomorrow celebrates our Independence Day. Much of the time we equate this with the establishment of freedom. But that freedom was really an attempt in a secular way to free a nation, under God, from the bonds of the perceived worldly tyranny. One aspect of that desire was the freedom to worship God in the manner each person chose. Or to not worship God at all.
Now 226 years later we see the fruit of the slow destruction of those freedoms then established, by the laws of entropy and sin. This pace seems to be accelerating in the last few years as post modernism, or whatever adjective you choose to use, gives us a sense of drifting without a set of moral attributes.
Many of those founders of America were strong Christian people. Many came, or were recent descendants of immigrants, to the New World seeking freedom from the dominance of state sponsored churches in Europe. This guarantors what we now call the separation of church and state. But again in recent years this has come to mean the state sponsorship of atheism and naturalism, both religions themselves.
It is well that we look at this early Genesis description, to let the LORD God lead us out of this morass of moral decay.
ŇGod loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.Ó This statement is something that both Adam and Eve knew in the garden setting even after the fall. It was just that wasnŐt the whole story. In order to take advantage of this plan, this relationship as we say today, they had to wait for God to bring His plan into their lives. All too often in our culture, this ŇGodŐs PlanÓ is really just a disguise for us to do our own thing. ŇIŐm going to do this God, bless me in my seeking to know good and evil.Ó
This is not the gospel of the Bible! We want to come to God our own way, by our own efforts, or at least our significant help. However, in that individualist approach there is a tendency to create a false fellowship and communion of our own creation. Another spin on this would be the tendency to not do what we believe we should be doing for the path appears difficult, or we are worried of what others will say, or have said already.
The Genesis account of Adam and Eve is the first biblical description of the cost of disobedience, but it also gives an illustration of a difficult path from disobedience to obedience. The obedience that the LORD God of the Bible requires is fully documented within its pages. Any fresh revelation from heaven, that does not aline with those precepts, is really not from heaven at all. It is not about sacrifice and ritual, as the Jewish people have attempted to perform, as well as much of the church through out her history. Just as Adam and EveŐs garments of fig leaves (verse 7) didnŐt fulfill the required clothing of righteousness in GodŐs economy, neither do our attempts to be a religious people.
Communion with God and communion within the church are really needed at this time. But for that to happen, there needs first to be the understanding that our fig leaves just donŐt do the job. It is only after our own trying to do it our own way fails, does the LORD God step in, rescue us from our deprived self and offer us the true freedom we all seek. Until that happens we will know no communion, and no real freedom. So let us make that our prayer for this celebration day, for American independence. Let it begin within ourselves and spread throughout the land.