The Call

Welcome

I have not posted in a few months. 

Today I want to continue the story we began in November called Paradise.

To do this please follow me back to a very early personal memory.

When I was about 3 years old, my family moved from a small east Texas town to a 74 acre farm about five miles from town.

I had many experiences there that helped shape who I am today.

One afternoon when I was playing by myself, I guess my older sister was at school and my little brother asleep or not inside the house- just myself and Mom, I heard my name being called. "Ann". I heard it a couple of times.

So I went to find my mom and ask her why she had called me. 

Mom looked at me and said, "I didn't call you."

Well, many years later I discovered who had called me and why.

Let's return to the story of the first humans, Adam and Eve.

Now the serpent was more crafty or subtle than any of the beasts that the Lord God had made.

And the serpent said to the woman, "Did God actually say 'you may not eat of any of the trees of the garden'?"

The woman replied to the serpent ,"We may eat of the trees of the garden, but God said ,'you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'."

But the serpent said to the woman, "you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves  together to cover themselves.

The man and the woman heard the sound of the LORD  God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid themselves  from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

And the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, "where are you?"

The man said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself". And God said, "who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"

Then the man replied, "the woman you gave to be with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate."

So the Lord God asked the woman, "what is this you have done?"

The woman said, "the serpent deceived me, and I ate."

The Lord God said to the serpent, "because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you eat all the days of your life; and I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel."

To the woman God said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

To the man God said, "since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit  I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.

The ground will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from the ground. For you are dust and you will return to dust."

Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. 

The LORD God made clothing out of animal skins for Adam and his wife and he clothed  them.

The LORD God said, "since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever."

So the LORD God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

The LORD God drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

This story is found in the Bible in Genesis chapter 3.

To understand this story we need to know what happened prior to the story.

God is the Creator of all things.

Everything God created was good.

God created angelic beings who served God in heaven as spirit beings.

Angels are not made in the image and likeness of God.

God created the man from the dirt and from the side of the man, God made the woman.

Both are created in the image of God. Both have equal worth before God.

If you remember from previous posts, the man, named Adam, by God, had been given a command about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Simply don't eat thereof for  in the day you eat it you will die.

The woman had not yet been created when God told Adam about not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The man and the woman were created naked and were not ashamed.

Nakedness in the Bible meant to be known and so known that you were vulnerable. 

Would you still love me if you knew how I truly am? 

God both knew and loved the man and his wife; they were morally innocent and had nothing to be ashamed about in the presence of God or one another.

In the cool of the evening God would come to earth and have intimate fellowship with His own image bearers.

Let's look carefully at our story for today. The serpent first talked with whom?

The serpent actually only talked with the woman , Eve.

Where was Adam, her husband?

He was with her and heard the entire conversation.

Over whom did Adam have jurisdiction or who was under Adam's authority?

In the Bible if a person gives a name to someone or something that person is under the authority of the one who gives the name.

God named Adam. However Adam named the animals and Adam gave the name Eve to his wife.

Whose authority was the serpent under? Certainly under Adam's.

What reason might the serpent have had to talk with the woman and not talk with Adam?

What was the serpent's  reason for talking to the woman about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

The serpent tried to do two things - first to show that God is not good and secondly to show that God is not great or sovereign.

How did the serpent put doubts in Eve's mind about the goodness of God?

I hope you are looking in the story to find the answers for yourself.

The serpent said nothing about the tree of life which was also in the middle of the garden and which was not forbidden to eat.

The serpent implied that God was withholding something good from Adam and Eve because the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make them like God.

But they were already created in the image of God!

They already were superior to the Angels and to the animal kingdom.

They already had unbroken fellowship with God with nothing to hide from God or from one another - they were morally perfect in every way.

The freedom to choose does not always bring the happiness we might expect.

In the story this one act of disobedience of eating a piece of fruit that must've tasted good and looks good brought shame and guilt.

They did not become better - instead now they were morally defiled.

Spiritually they died. Communion with God was broken.

They came up with an idea of using fig leaves  to try to cover their shame.

Where was God when this took place? Did God know anything about this?

Yes of course God is everywhere present and God knows and sees everything.

What happened when the couple heard the sound of the Lord God in the garden that afternoon?

They ran and tried to hide behind some trees.

God came to Adam and said to the man "where are you?" 

Adam replied, "I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself."

Now isn't that strange? Adam had put the leaves on his body and on the body of his wife  so they would not feel any shame. But in the presence of God both of them were terrified. It seems the fig leaves were not adequate to protect them from God's penetrating gaze upon their guilt and shame.

"Who told you that you were naked?" God asks Adam.

When did Adam become naked? He was created naked and before his disobedience, his nakedness- his being known by his wife or by God didn't bother him.

You see guilt and shame are first on the inside - they are not on the outside.

This is why nothing we can do can cover our nakedness; no good works or religious rituals or many prayers or acts of kindness- we still are afraid that if God of other people really knew us, no one could love us.

Did God know where they were? What was the reason that God called to the man? After all it was the woman who first took the fruit and ate and then gave to her husband. But God didn't talk first to the woman about this act of disobedience.

God comes to Adam so Adam can explain the reason why he disobeyed.

Have you eaten from the tree that I told you not to eat thereof?

God had said they would surely die if they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But they didn't die at least physically they didn't die. However spiritually they were dead.

Adam does not answer "yes" or "no" if he had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ; he just says the woman , God, that you gave to me , she gave the food to me and I ate. Here we see the first evidence of blaming someone else for something that was done in disobedience to the command of God.

This was not just a lapse of memory. The act of eating the fruit for Adam was clearly rebellion against what God had commanded.

The woman didn't do any better when God questions her : what is this that you have done? 

The woman simply said that the serpent deceived me and I ate.

Neither Adam nor Eve seemed to think it was a big deal what they had done.

However each of them brought the curse on the earth and on their relationship with God and on their relationship with one another and that which they were created to do : the woman to bear children and the man to take care of the ground -now those things had a curse on them.

What other results do we see from the man's choice to exercise his own will in place of the will of God?

Satan, the deceiver, is using the body of the serpent to try and pursuade the humans to reject the authority of God to tell them how to live.

God puts a curse on the serpent and says there will be continual hostility between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman.

However God makes a promise to the woman that one day there will be a man child born from the woman who will crush the head of the serpent and the serpent will bruise the heel of this man child.

God also makes coverings of animal skins for Adam and his wife. He replaces their self effort to cover their sense of shame and guilt -( the fig leaves and the blame shifting) and, instead, God chooses to sacrifice an innocent animal in order to cover the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

What other choice might God have made? Of course to kill them. Instead the blood of the innocent animal was in place of the blood of Adam and Eve. You see the life is in the blood.

God speaks to himself actually saying now that humans have become like us we need to make sure they cannot eat from the tree of life and stay in this condition forever.

The condition God meant is he didn't want them to remain spiritually dead.

So God banished them from the paradise of Eden and put an angel to protect any attempt to return to the tree of life and eat from that tree. For one act of disobedience, the couple were kicked out of Paradise.

What can we learn from this story? And what does the story have to do with the voice I heard that called my name? God desires to have intimate fellowship with humans. God wants to restore the relationship that God once had with humans who are created to reflect the glory of God. 

The glory of God is His perfection of moral character. 

We call this the holiness of God.

After Adam disobeyed God , did Adam try to find God? No, it was God who came and called Adam's name ; this is true today . God, the father, calls the name of those that God is seeking to rescue from guilt and shame; from separation from God; from spiritual death - and to restore relationally as sons and daughters.

God wants to cover our shame and guilt.

How does God do this today? The next post we will talk about that and also what happened in my life as a result of hearing my name called. 

My mother had not called me; 

I knew it was God calling my name.

But why was God calling me by name?