Episode 248

TODAY’S READING:

22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 

Genesis 3:22-23

 

A few things stood out to me when I continued to read where we left off yesterday. First and foremost, Adam blamed Eve, but yesterday we saw that he was with her the whole time. It was unfair of him to pin it all on Eve, and God knew that. Remember that it takes two to tango.

 

There are a few more things that I want to address. The first being God’s statement. “The man has now become like one of us.” I really thought about this and prayed and asked. Clearly, God is talking to Jesus. In John 1:1, it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus, in the word, turned to flesh. So in this statement, God is talking to Jesus.

 

But I wanted to dive a little deeper. Is God saying Adam is now like God in that he is Holy? No, that is clearly not the case. We are not like them, we are imperfect, and they are perfect. But I think what He was trying to say was that Adam now had the understanding of what was good and what was bad. What produced shame and what didn’t. God understood that. So did Jesus, and no man understood it too.

 

The third thing that really stood out to me was the line that says, “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

 

We learned earlier in this book that there were two trees. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge. They were allowed to eat from the tree of life, but they were not allowed to eat from the second tree. In this line, we see that God is so angry He has taken away the tree of life from Adam and Eve’s reach.

 

We know that Jesus came to pay the ultimate price. He is the tree of life that we get to drink from. He is the water that will never allow us to be thirsty. He is the reason we get to live forever.

 

Adam may have messed things up for us, but Jesus came to rectify it. We are a lot like Adam, but we have a mighty savior who wants to save us. It’s our choice if we want to drink from His well. 

 

PRAYER

Jesus, thank you for all that you give us. Thank you for giving us eternal life. We are grateful to have a savior like you. The word turned to flesh. You were there from the beginning. You will be there at the end. We only really have you to count on, so remind us to lean on you when we grow weary. It is with absolutely everything in us that we pray, AMEN!