Jump Start # 569

Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

This week our Jump Starts are going to focus upon Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. There are many valuable lessons there for us and I hope that these will remind us, teach us, encourage us, and help us in our relationships at home, and our relationship with the Lord.

Let us begin with Adam. What God says and what we’ve learned from school, museums and the Discovery Channel don’t always fit together. Adam was the first man. Paul said that in 1 Corinthians 15. He was made at the “beginning.” Genesis confirms that, and Jesus believed that. This first person was intelligent. He was given the task of naming the animals. He communicated with God and his wife Eve. We get a different concept when we look away from the Bible. Evolution has convinced many that there was a series of ape-like humans that in time looked less like a monkey and more like a human. The common thought is that these “early men” grunted, had very primitive form of language and intelligence. Cave men is what most think of when the idea of early man is discussed.

After the first sin, Adam and Eve were clothed. There wasn’t generations of hairy, naked, ape-like creatures, not if the Bible is true. We must be able to stand with God and realize that so much of the early man concepts are theories that support godless evolution.

Adam and Eve began in the garden of Eden. They were created by the perfect God. Everything God made was good, right and functional. Adam and Eve were created mature, smart and with the capabilities to live well in the garden. Adam was to cultivate the garden and care for it. That took some knowledge of plants, horticulture, and agriculture.  Adam was no dummy.

It is interesting that God uses several words in His communication with Adam that he had never experienced. He must have had an understanding of these words, but how different they must have been for Adam than they are us.

• God told Adam to leave his father and mother. Adam didn’t have a father or a mother in the way that we do. He was the first. How would he have understood that? All of us have a mother—good, or bad. Adam didn’t.

• God told Adam to cleave to his wife. That was Eve. We understand marriage. We’ve been to weddings. Many of us are married. Adam’s concept of marriage was based upon what God told him, not on experience, observation or books.

It is interesting that God gave Adam one choice, Eve. He didn’t date. He didn’t date and break up and then found someone else. There was no comparing Eve to anyone else. Eve didn’t have to worry about the neighbor’s wife, be in competition with the super models, or contend with past romances of Adam. God presented her to Adam. That was the one. That was the only one. Adam and Eve didn’t come with a past, baggage or sins, as we bring into relationships. It was all fresh, new and original.

• God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden they would die. Death. We see it all the time. Our loved ones die. Our pets die. We drive and see road kill. This is part of our world. The news tells of violence overseas in which people were killed. There are storms that kill. There are accidents which kill.

For Adam, death, like marriage, like parents, was an intellectual understanding, not one from witnessing nor experience. Genesis one ends by telling us that all living creatures ate plants. This included the beast of the fields. This included Adam and Eve. Originally, everything ate plants. Animals did not kill each other for food. Man didn’t kill animals to eat. Not originally. The change happens after the flood, in Genesis nine. This means, until the sin, nothing ever died. Death was a concept and not something Adam saw.

A side point, this means that the dinosaurs did not die out before man came along, not if the Bible is true.

God placed Adam in a perfect world. Adam’s world was the best it could be. It was not marred with crime, pollution, nasty attitudes, prejudice, hatred or, atheism. The perfect world involved God. The perfect world had rules. The perfect world had consequences if those rules were broken. In this perfect world, God gave the first man the ability to choose. He had a free will. He was pre programmed. He was on a destination that was beyond his control. He was given a mind, a will and a God. The first man had to believe and trust God. It was in this perfect world that we find Satan, tempting, twisting and tormenting the mind of the first couple. Man had to choose between God, who they knew, or Satan who they had no history with. Who had been good to them? Who had helped them? Who made them? The answer seems obvious to us, yet, it remains the same for us. Satan continues to twist, tempt and torment our hearts between what we know of God and what Satan offers.

More will come about Satan and the first couple.

I find it interesting that God didn’t start with a community, only one man and one woman. There was no facebook to communicate with others, only each other and God. I wonder how many of us today would survive like that. Many rarely talk with their mates but communicate with others all the time. There may be some lessons for us in this. Would we have survived like that? Do we spend more time talking to others than our mates? Do we share our personal lives and feelings with others more than we do our mates? Maybe we ought to talk a walk with our spouse and find out what is going on in their world and heart and mind. This may lead to a closeness that is missing and head off an affair which most often starts between two people who find a connection in being able to talk to each other. They find something in others that is missing at home. They share stories, empathy, and hearts. Before long, they share a bed. Adam had only Eve and God to talk to. Eve had only Adam and God to talk to. That arrangement may have made prayers more alive, more detailed, and more specific. There was no one else to talk to.  Bland prayers and prayers that say the same thing each time may come from hearts that don’t know how to talk to God and hearts that don’t have much to stay to God. Could it be that we’ve become “talked out” with God because we’ve talked to everyone and anyone other than God.

Adam and Eve had only each other and God. So often, we have just the opposite. We have the world, but avoid  each other and God. Maybe something we ought to chew on for a while.

Roger