There is something peculiarly striking in the manner in which the Book of Genesis opens. We’re at once introduced to God in the essential fulness of His Being. There’s no introductory matter, as it were; it’s to God that we’re brought. We hear Him, almost, breaking earth’s silence and shining in upon earth’s darkness, for the purpose of developing a sphere in which He might display His eternal power and Godhead.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. . . So God created man in His own image. in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.”
But the third chapter of Genesis sets before us in stark nakedness the breaking up of that lovely scene.
The serpent enters with a bold question as to divine revelation: “Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” This was the crafty enquiry, and let’s make this point quite clear, had the Word of God been dwelling richly in Eve’s heart, her answer might have been direct, simple and conclusive. Let’s come down the corridors of time to the closing hours of this day. To admit the question, “Hath God said?”, when we know that God has spoken, is positive infidelity; and the very fact of our admitting it proves our total incapacity to meet it. Let’s just note one other very important fact. In the case of Eve, the form of her reply evidenced the fact that she’d admitted to her own heart the serpent’s crafty enquiry. Instead of adhering to the exact words of God, she, in her reply, actually added thereto. She added to what God had said. His command was simple enough, “Thou shalt not eat of it.” To this Eve adds her own words, “neither shall ye touch it”. Those were not the words of the Creator, but of Eve, and its plain that she was entirely off the true ground of simple confidence in and subjection to God’s holy word.
Let us take to ourselves this fact from the Psalmist of Israel, “By the words of thy mouth I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer”.
Back in the Garden of Eden, amidst the resplendent glory of the Creator’s handiwork, Eve took herself out of the hands of God—out of the position of absolute dependence upon and subjection to His word. In Genesis 3. 6 we are presented with three things, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life”: the three factors which the apostle states comprehend “all that is in the world”. These things took the lead and God was shut out. The very attempt of this first pair to elevate themselves in the scale of moral existence involved the loss of true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, enslaved, conscience- smitten, terrified creatures. “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, where are thou?”. What greater proof do we need from the Almighty as evidence that man was now lost. But what of the sinner’s reply to that question from the Creator? The reply only reveals the awful depth into which he had fallen. “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself.” Man had lost all.
First Adam
The first Adam had lost his dominion, his dignity, his happiness, his innocence, his purity, his peace; and above all he accused God of being the cause of it all. There he stood, a lost, ruined, guilty, and yet self-vindicating and God-accusing sinner. How pregnant with meaning are the words in the New English Bible, as they come from that 5th chapter of Romans, “It was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death pervaded the whole human race, inasmuch as all men have sinned”.
Well might the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes say to us so significantly, “All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again”. And so in his concluding chapter he epitomises all that we have considered so far, when he recorded these words, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher: all is vanity”.
Wherefore, the Lord God “drove out the man”. He drove him out into a world which, everywhere, exhibited the lamentable results of his tragic fall. The cherubim and the flaming sword, too, forbade fallen man to pluck the fruit of the tree of life.
I suppose it would be very difficult indeed to find more fitting words to describe this scene than the passage recorded for us by the pen of the prophet Isaiah: “The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof: because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate.”
Having surveyed the tragic scene—the hours of dark st danger — we suddenly realise:
We live our lives and build our homes upon this crust of clay; the earth we tread conceals the dead; the men of yesterday — lie buried in the darkness, thrust away from human sight. . . On the dust of their decay we dwell in life and light.
It was through one man that sin entered the world and, through sin, death. The proofs of our guilt are not only found in the Bible; they stand thick around us: the world’s history is written in blood; idolatry abounds in all places; death reigns throughout this vast globe of ours.
Let our hearts be humbled. Let us never forget that in that confession of our first parents, that confession of the first Adam, there was no repentance, no truth, no love to God, but ignorance, hardness of heart, and accusation of their Creator. Their act of rebellion was the violation of a precept remarkably plain, an injunction so simply positive. When we view such an act of rebellion, let us view the deceitfulness of our own hearts; and, thinking of a judgment to come, let us remember that all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
What finer exhortation could we leave with you at the close of our review of the tragedy in Eden, and as we stand on the threshold of a New Year, than the words of our beloved Apostle Paul, who said, “Sin must no longer reign in your mortal body, exacting obedience to the body’s desires. You must no longer put its several parts at sin’s disposal, as implements for wrong doing”.
May the Almighty give us, each one, strength to do just that!
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One