Directional Commentary 1.9.16

Death in the Garden

Last week we were in Revelation 1 and verse 2 discussing the Trinity. God is a trinity and the Bible says that He made man in His image, so therefore man is a trinity as well. Man is a trinity in that he is Soul, Body, and Spirit. We must understand the concept of the trinity of man to understand exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve disobeyed by eating the forbidden fruit. The warning God gave Adam about this is found in Genesis 2:17 when He said, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." 

So what happened when they ate the fruit? They DIED! They died spiritually and physically. They immediately died spiritually and they began to die physically. You see, originally man was supposed to live forever. But Adam’s sin brought physical and spiritual death to himself and to everyone after him. That would be you and me. We were born to die physically and we were both born dead spiritually.

That’s why the Bible says that we must be born again. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 that “…except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Born again? Yes!  Man’s spirit must be born again because it died in the Garden.

You see, the Bible says that God used to come down in the cool of the day and commune with Adam and Eve, but once they disobeyed, that communion was broken. They fell out of fellowship with God because of their sinful choice to listen to the serpent (Satan) rather than God. That’s also our problem. We are tempted to do the same on a daily bases.

I’ve been told by people that if they would have been in the garden instead of Adam and Eve, they never would have eaten the fruit. That’s not so, because all of us take a bite of it daily through our disobedience!

Now that’s the bad news. What’s the good news? The Bible says that God came down into the Garden one day looking for Adam and Eve and he called out, “Where are you?” in Genesis 3:9.  Of course, He knew exactly where they were and why they were there. By the way, He knows where you are today and exactly why you’re there as well.

Adam responded in Genesis 3:10, “I heard you’re voice in the Garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And God said in the next verse, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”Of course, God knew they had and that’s why they were hiding. They were trying to cover their nakedness (sin).  Oh, we do that too.

It’s also interesting that instead of taking the blame for their disobedience they had the nerve to blame God, the serpent, and each other. Adam said in Gen. 3:12, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." Eve said in the next verse, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Yes, we too blame others for our sins. I hear people say, “Oh, its society.” Others say, “It’s the way I was raised.” No, the Bible says that it is sin.

Well, how did God remedy the problem? The Bible says in Genesis 3:21 that “…God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.” Simply put, something had to die to cover their sin. It’s debatable, but I believe that this animal was a lamb.

I hope your listening, because this is the entire point that will radically change your life if you come to grips with it. Something innocent had to be sacrificed to cover the sins of the guilty. In the Garden of Eden, it was a little animal which I have every reason to believe it was a lamb.  In the New Testament, it was Jesus Christ! Yes, Jesus Christ was the innocent sacrifice given to cover (forgive) our sins. John the Baptist knew this when he cried out in John 1:29, “Behold!  The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”