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In the Garden of Eden, trouble came
in the form of the tangible, the beautiful and the subtle. “When
the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to
the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”
Remember, “the
LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
Man was different from the animals. He had communion with the Invisible
Creator God. God spoke with Him and God said that what He was going to do
on earth would be done by man. God gave him dominion over all the earth,
but what God willed would be done through the man.
The Invisible, Omnipotent, Creator
God had a relationship with the finite time-space-matter man. The only way
the Devil, that Old Serpent, could bring man down would be if he could get
man to think on a lower level than the Infinite Almighty God. Satan needed
to get man to think materially, emotionally, and fleshly. In other words,
Adam must be led to be concerned about the “bone
of my bone and flesh of my flesh” part of life in the garden.
So Satan chose the serpent to
approach Eve because “the serpent was more
crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.” Not
being sure exactly how the serpent looked before the curse, we do know he
must have been quite beautiful. In the form of the serpent Satan spoke to
Eve and caused her to first become defensive of God and then questioning of
God’s goodness. Satan asked, "Did God really
say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" With that
Eve launches into a defense, "We may eat fruit
from the trees in the garden, but God did say,
'You must not eat fruit from the tree
that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will
die.' "
Now he has her and he says,
"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows
that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil." He makes her question God’s goodness.
He was saying that God wasn’t as good to her as He could be.
Satan tempting the couple was not to
get them to worship him, but to worship self. Self for self is the
foundation of all the trouble, not only in the Garden of Eden, but also in
the garden of our lives. He was saying how much better things would be if
they had it their way, the good and evil way, where they would be as God.
“When
the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to
the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”
By getting Eve to see the fruit was good for food (material), good to see
(emotional), and good for wisdom (intellectual), he had her in the lower
realm we call the natural (not spiritual).
The spiritual is not visible,
emotional, or intellectual. Lust, logic, and reason are not the Holy
Spirit, even though the Spirit is logical and reasonable. When you can be
persuaded to look at your problems from simply logic and reason (and even
lustfully), you are not being spiritual. This is when your problems or
troubles grow into immeasurable monsters.
"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what
God has prepared for those who love him"-- these things God has revealed
to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the
depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the
spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the
thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received
not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we
might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart
this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit,
interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned.
Eve was deceived.
"The serpent deceived me, and I ate." And 2Cor. 11:3 says, “the
serpent deceived Eve by his cunning.” If Satan can get our eyes
off of God we will be deceived, too.
Adam was not deceived. He loved the
“bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”
so much; he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her. With his back to God
and his focus on the “blessing” instead of God, Eve
“took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with
her; and he did eat.”
Adam had an ideal in his mind that
was now in jeopardy. Pursuing the ideal instead of God
he did eat.
Any time we have an ideal, the way we think it should be, and we
pursue that ideal instead of God, we will sin.
If Adam had turned his back on the
problem and sought God, things would have been a lot different. If you are
buried under a heavy load of trouble and you have an “ideal” in mind of the
way it ought to be, even when that “ideal” is taken from your interpretation
of the Scriptures, you may be acting “like God,
knowing good and evil.”
Turn your back on the problem and
seek God. “Seek you first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.”
Jesus did say, “My yoke is EASY and My burden
is LIGHT. That is either the truth or it is a lie. Is the yoke
you wear chaffing and hard? Is the burden you bear heavy and crushing?
Take stock. That is not the burden He said he would give you. Believe.
Turn to Him. Seek Him and let Him deal with the problem. He will show you
things you couldn’t know any other way. You will be delivered IN
your problems before you will be delivered FROM them.
We do not seek a trouble free life.
We seek to be free in the troubles of our life. Trust the sufficiency of
God, not your own. Paul said, “I am greatly
encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.” That is
turning your back on the problem and seeking Him Who sent the trouble. Job
asked, “Shall we accept good from God, and not
trouble?" It is good to know that the one Who sent the trouble
did so for our good. In 2 Corinthians 4:15-18, Paul said of trouble:
All this is for your benefit, so that the grace
that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to
the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are
wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light
and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far
outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Praise be to the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of
all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort
those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
2Cor. 1:3-4
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