Pundit Press

Sunday Morning Bible Story

    Death in the Garden

Genesis chapter one begins:  "In the beginning, God created the
heaven and the earth."   The first chapter in the Bible goes on to
reveal that in the first six days of recorded history, God made
pretty much everything. Day one: Light, separated from darkness;
day two: the heavens, separated from water;  day three: plants
and trees, land and seas;  day four: sun, moon and stars;  day
five:  birds and fish;  and on the sixth day:  animals and man.
And you thought taking the kids to school, football practice,
volleyball practice and band was a busy week.

And so begins the biblical account of the real first family, and
our first parents, Adam and Eve.  Man and woman, made in the
image of God, made for His glory; made in perfection, in the
Garden of Eden.  It also says, "God blessed them," and said,
"Be fruitful and multiply."  So for our first parents, a blessing
and a command to go with the blessing.  What a gift, directly
from the living God, marriage with a blessing.

It is interesting to notice that God created them as adults.  He
did not give them apparent age, He simply created them of age.
Just like he created the earth, not with apparent age, for who
would that be apparent to?  H-e-l-l-o.  God at creation made
everything just as He wanted it. 

When He made plants and trees, it was not seedlings.  When
He made the land and seas, it was not a clump of mud and a
puddle.  When He made the sun, moon and stars, it was not
a baby moon, a tiny sun, and some real little stars, He created
them as they are.  The creation of all things by God is repeated
hundreds of times all through the Bible, for us to simply believe
it.

God created the world and all things in it and over it, for the man
and the woman, gave them His blessing, and thus for the entire
time of life on earth, He blessed the institution of marriage.  What
a perfect story: marriage between a man and a woman, with the
blessing of the Creator, thus giving purpose and meaning to man's
existence on earth.

Question is:  if God intended marriage to be perfect bliss, what
happened?  Why is not marriage still perfect?  If God blessed the
institution of marriage and commanded Adam and Eve to be
fruitful and multiply, why is it such a struggle to keep a marriage
and raise a family?  Why all the pain, suffering and lifelong
struggle?

As you remember from when you were a child, and actually heard
a Bible story on Sunday morning, God told Adam and Even not to
eat of the tree of life.  If they ate of it, God said they would die.
And so they ate of the tree of life, and the second they disobeyed
God, they died.  Spiritually, they died immediately.  At once they
were separated from a Holy God.  When they disobeyed God with
the free will which He gave them, they died spiritually, they lost
their free will and the began to die physically. 

The proof of that, if you need proof, is that 5772 years later,
according to the Hebrew calendar, everyone still dies.  Men die,
women die, children die, billionaires die, paupers die, everyone
dies. 

So in theology, we see terms like, "the federal headship of Adam;"
"original sin;" terms which mean that as the first human on earth,
Adam represented all of us.  When he became a sinner, we were
born in sin.  Original sin which began with Adam's sin now
extends to us.  He died, we die. 

But the truth is, the Bible is not a story about man in the garden.
It is the story of Christ in the gospel.  Because of sin, man was
cursed, and instead of perfection, life on earth became nothing
but a struggle for Adam and Eve and everyone born after them.

The gospel teaches that the only way back to God is through the
sacrifice of the Son of God, when He took the sin of man upon
Himself, the just one for the unjust ones, that He might bring
us to God.  There was death for all mankind in the Garden of
Eden, but there is life for all who believe in the Lamb of God,
who takes away the sin of the world.