God’s Quick and Dispassionate Decisions — A Lesson From Eden
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. – Genesis 3:22-24
The way God dealt with Adam and Eve on account of their fall, even after just attending to their welfare by clothing them, reveals another of His personality traits. He is quick in action and dispassionate in His dealings.
After ensuring that Adam and his wife were adequately clothed and protected from whatever hazard they could face by having their bodies exposed, God wasted no time in removing the couple from the garden immediately after. Why did He do this? Because He did not want them to go ahead and eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, as that would be more disastrous than them eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Eating from the fruit of the Tree of Life would make Adam and Eve, and perhaps their descendants, immortal. In their fallen state, this would have had far-reaching effects and distorted the agenda of God for humankind, as He had an ultimate plan of enjoying everlasting fellowship with humans in an innocent state, whereas no unholiness can stand in His sight.
Therefore, to prevent humans from sentencing themselves to a lifetime of impurity, God wasted no time banishing them from the Garden of Eden. He did not wait to legislate to see if they had really changed and might not repeat their mistake with the Tree of Life. He does not take such chances.
He also did not want to start considering the pros and cons of their remaining in the garden or being evicted from it. He knew what the odds were and so took a dispassionate decision to remove the couple from the garden, He also set an angel by the entrance to guard the garden in case they wanted to sneak in.
This scenario underscores the quick wit of God and His impassive disposition to matters, even when His love and affection remain unchanged. The way He dealt in the affairs of Adam and Eve was quick, decisive, and dispassionate. Leaving them in the garden could lead to unwanted consequences and He would not have that, so He did something about it.
That’s the God we serve.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He Cares Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. – Genesis 3:21 Today, we will be meditating on the…
Understanding God: He Cares
Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. – Genesis 3:21
Today, we will be meditating on the caring nature of God. He cares for His creatures, more so humans.
While He must still be very displeased with Adam and Eve after their disobedience and having served them punishment for their misconduct. He did not entirely banish them from His sight or etch their names in a black book. That is if He keeps one.
According to our reference passage today, God went out of His way to make tunics of skin to clothe Adam and Eve. It is pertinent to note that when the couple discovered their own nakedness, the best they could do for themselves was to sew “fig leaves together and made themselves clothing.” (Genesis 3:7).
However, when God saw what they had on, He knew they needed something more than that. Even though He was not happy with them, He still made better and more suitable clothing for them to cover their nudity. He could have chosen to ignore them and allow them to wallow in their misery. That would have served them right for their disobedience, wouldn’t it?
He could have also had a good laugh at their folly for using fig leaves as covering. He could have smirked in mischievous amusement to see how long the leaves would serve them. These are some of the things someone less intelligent or without the nature of God would have done. Not God.
He is too caring and affectionate to endure the suffering of His children. Therefore, even when He must still be smarting from the disregard of Adam and Eve, He still provided better clothing for them to cover their shame. He did not allow them to make do with leaves that would dry up with time. He gave them something better because He cares.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He Cuts to the Chase Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the…
Understanding God: He Cuts to the Chase
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.”
– Genesis 3:9-15
Another attribute of God, as exemplified in our reference scripture today, is that He cuts to the chase and does not beat around the bush in addressing matters. He is direct in His approach and does not ramble in an attempt to sound diplomatic or be politically correct.
Immediately Adam told God he was hiding from Him; the next thing God asked was if he had eaten the fruit He forbade him from eating. God could have played the fool and kept pillowing Adam with questions to get him to expose himself. But He is not like that. He is straight to the point.
Once Adam admitted that it was the woman who gave Him the fruit to eat, the next thing God did was to address the woman. He did not even give attention to the accusing undertone in Adam’s statement that it was the woman He gave him that made him sin so. Someone of lesser intelligence or stature might have taken umbrage at this and start to debate with Adam if He did wrong by finding him a partner. Not God. He does not indulge in platitudes.
After calling out the woman, she in turn named the serpent as the culprit who made her eat. At this point, God did not need to ask the serpent any question. Doing so would have been a reduction of His stature. Instead, He pronounced a judgment on the serpent for the terrible thing it did.
In His methodical way, once He was through with the serpent, He addressed the woman next, saying:
“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.”
– Genesis 3:16
From the woman He went back to the man who was His primary contact in the first place. He first expressed His disappointment at the man’s error in placing more importance on heeding what his wife told him over a charge He God had given him. See His statement of disappointment: “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 [f]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.”
– Genesis 3:17-19
Even though these passages do not inspire much cheer to read, they nonetheless shed light on the nature of God; the way He approaches issues. How He reacts to disobedience as well as how direct He is in getting to the root of the matter; and how prompt He is in making His verdict known.
He is a frontal God who cuts to the chase with no fuss or ceremony. Some of us can learn from that.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He Keeps in Touch Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of…
Understanding God: He Keeps in Touch
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. – Genesis 3:8 (New International Version)
In continuation of our exploration of the nature and personality of God, another insight derived from our reference passage is that He keeps in touch. He does not just set up and leave or commission and then go AWOL. No, He maintains contact and relationship with His creatures.
The passage we are meditating on today shows us how God sought out Adam and Eve by visiting them in the garden in the cool of the day. There is something about this scenario that suggests that the visit was neither a one-off thing nor an extraordinary one. God must have been regularly visiting the couple before to fellowship with them, since that was one of the reasons He created them in the first place (Revelation 4:11).
This aspect of God should help us to better appreciate the fact that He is even closer to us than we can imagine. The fact that Adam and Eve erred and that created a vacuum between them and God does not mean that God then isolated Himself totally from them or from their descendants after them. If He did, we would not have read about His various encounters and interactions with other individuals and peoples in the Bible. That is one reason.
Therefore, even when humans fell and kept failing Him, God did not abandon them altogether. He was always scouting the length and breadth of the earth to see who He could relate with, offer help to and come through for (2 Chronicles 16:9). The secret to connecting Him when He passes by is to have a pure heart, as that is what He is always scanning to know those ready to house Him.
Secondly, the fact that God later sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to come to the earth to complete the project of reconciling humanity to Himself, this time on a very large scale, shows how much God values connecting with humans and relating with them.
Now, isn’t it interesting to know that God truly values a relationship with us? The fact that we may not see Him in physical form does not negate His existence, reduce His ubiquity or lessen the intensity of His desire to connect.
Indeed, the scriptures and history are replete with the accounts of those who have been able access and form a bond with Him. Those whom He Himself personally called because He had special needs for them, or those who really desired a relationship with Him and paid the price for having it through personal devotion and their life choices. Those to whom His invitation that “you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) meant more than mere words to. The question is, are you one of them?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth…” Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” – Genesis 1:22,28
In continuation of our meditation on the nature of God, another of His attributes that we shall meditate on today is His predisposition to blessing. He is a blesser; the God who blesses His own works.
It is instructive that when God created all the other elements He had made earlier, He only appraised their final outlook. However, after He created living creatures, starting from birds to sea creatures, winged birds, cattle, beasts, and ultimately humans, He started blessing them as we can see in the reference passage above. God knew that humans were going to betray His confidence and stray in their ways, yet He blessed them. He also knew that some of the other creatures He made were going to turn rogue, yet this did not prevent Him from pronouncing blessings on them.
By proclaiming blessings on His living creatures, God defined how He wanted them to be engaged through the prism of blessings. To the living creatures, He said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” To the humans, He said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This tells us that humans are created for blessings, to bless and be blessed by a God who blesses. Some of the blessings He pronounced on humankind include fruitfulness, multiplication, replenishment, and dominion. Now, if the very first engagement of God with His creatures is anchored on blessing, should you do otherwise?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
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