Because you listened to your wife...

 Read Genesis 3

God told Adam that the ground was cursed, that work would be hard now—you will sweat, and there will be weeds.  There will be thistles and thorns where you had known only a lush garden before.

OBTW—you will die and go back to the earth from which you came.

There was also a tree of life in the garden, but in this original game of Deal or No Deal, you chose the tree that also comes with death

Why did God do this? Why?  Don’t you wish we knew why?

Maybe we do.  What did God tell Adam?

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife…”

I think there is a 6–8-month Bible study in that statement alone. Here’s the whole statement before God listed the consequences.

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,’

Remember that Eve did some analysis upon prompting by the serpent. I will go so far as to say that the serpent while deceptive did not trick Eve.  Eve did her own analysis.

The fruit of this tree that God had put off limits and somehow, Eve noted that they couldn’t even touch it, was pleasing to the eye.  It looked pretty.

It was good for food.  If you recall in chapter 2, all the trees in the garden were pleasing to the eye and good for food. Why was this one off-limits?  What made it different?

Consider the name of the tree?  It was the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Knowledge sounds like something good.  It was a cousin of wisdom. Indeed that made this tree more desirable that the others that were just good-looking and tasty.

If she ate of the tree, she would be like God.  That would be a good thing, right? We are challenged to be imitators of God. Paul wrote that he was trying to be like Christ and his readers should follow his example.

Eve had a solid case for eating the fruit of the tree.

·       It was like the other trees—pleasing to the eye

·       It was like the other trees—good for food

·       It was more than the other trees—it offered knowledge or wisdom—something beyond what she had known so far

·       It was more than the other trees—she would be more like God

This was a reasonable thing that Eve did.  There was only one problem.  God had said “No!”  From the beginning, God’s ways and thoughts were higher than those of humankind.

And from the beginning, our own understanding—our finite understanding—would be among, if not the biggest temptation to do something that God said not to do. Our own understanding makes its debut in the fall of humankind.

God punished Adam because he listened to his wife—not about what to wear to dinner—but about something for which God had already given instructions.  The root of the sin took place in Adam’s mind.  He listened to something contrary to what God had said.

Had the counsel come from Uncle Bob instead of his wife, the fault would have been the same.  Adam—who had no uncles—chose to listen to and embrace some thought that was contrary to God’s instruction.

The sin manifested itself when Adam acted—when he ate the fruit.  Eve’s analysis seemed more extensive than Adam’s but we don’t know.  What we do know is that both chose their own understanding over obedience to God.

Did they trust God?  God gave them the ability to choose his ways or their own understanding.  God—being God—surely knew what they would choose.  As the chapter closes, the tree of life—which we will see again in Revelation—was guarded because Adam and Eve—humankind—had become like God in one way.  They knew good and evil.

 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.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

We see in this passage the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the words one of us. In one way, humankind had become like God.  We knew good and evil and could choose between them.

Father, Son, and Spirit also knew good and evil but their own understanding was higher than ours and they never ventured down the path of evil.

I think we have mislabeled this chapter the Fall of Man or the Fall of Humanity.  God didn’t kick us to the curb.  Humankind was not forever doomed. He gave us a route to being made right with him.  He provided Adam and Eve some more suitable clothing.  His command to multiply and subdue the earth was not revoked.

The first humans would just live day-by-day knowing good and knowing evil and having to choose moment-to-moment.   They—we—humankind would not know what it was to live in right standing with God until we received the free gift of salvation that came by grace.

Yes, there would be some temporary measures of atonement in the law that came through Moses, but we know that salvation—our redemption from sin—is by grace alone

For us, the knowledge of good and evil comes with struggle.  Remember that we are of the earth and we are of God.  God chose us to be with him forever.  We must choose to receive the gift of salvation.  Then we must choose to live a life worthy of the calling—the yoke of our Master—that we have received.

Our lives—because we have knowledge of good and evil—are struggles to trust in the Lord over our own understanding.  When our reasoning conflicts with God’s instructions, we must know that God has good plans for us.

Do we stop thinking for ourselves?  By no means!  God gave us a sound mind and expects us to use it. We should find a cure for cancer.  We should invent the most fuel-efficient vehicle ever.  We should be able to make change. We should put the sound mind that God gave us to work as we subdue—bring order to the world.

But…

And this is a big one. When what we understand is contrary to what God has commanded, then we must defer to God for he is the One who has good plans for us.

No matter how attractive the course of action that we understand is, if it is contrary to God’s directions, it is not the best choice. That’s where we come again to the full biblical witness.  Cherry picking leads us to our own understanding.  We must show ourselves approved in seeking God’s will by studying all of his word.

We can blame everything on the serpent, but if we do, we refuse to address the problem of desiring our own understanding more than what God has told us to do. 

We can do the Flip Wilson thing—the Devil made me do it—but we fail to address the root cause of the problem.  We must address our propensity to seek our own understanding over God’s ways. We have to deal with that to live fully.

Salvation is a free gift.  Desiring what God has in store for us is our work.  Leaning into God’s ways is our challenge.  Seeking God and his kingdom and his righteousness first—before all things—and that includes our own understanding—is our charge.

When it’s just the guys sitting around drinking coffee, then the lesson for this chapter is the world is a mess because Adam listened to his wife.  But when we decide to get serious about living this life to the full, we know our daily challenge is to choose God and his ways over our own understanding.

It’s pretty, good for food, good for knowledge, and makes us more like God, but God said no.  Four strong points against one little no. 

That’s our challenge.  Choose wisely.  Trust God.

Amen.