19. Beginner Bible Course: The sin of Adam and Eve, Pt. 2 (the essence)

EPISODE 19  The simple Bible overview of…THE ESSENCE OF THE SIN OF ADAM AND EVE

When God is giving Adam the first man, a place to live. He says this, he placed the man in the garden of Eden to 10 and care for it. But the Lord God gave him this warning. You may freely eat of any fruit in the garden, except the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you will surely die. My students are insightful. Most of them coming into my class have heard that God knows everything. He knows things past, present, and future in advance. So when we read Genesis three, almost inevitably, a hand goes up, Mr. Nelson. If God knew this was going to happen, why didn't he stop it?

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Others will dig deeper and say, why did he put that tree there in the garden? Well, I answered that by picking on the girls. I say, ladies, I'd like you to vote. Let's just assume someday you will all get married. I give them two choices. You can choose whom you will date. And when the young man who's captured, your heart gets down on his knee and pops the question you can say yes or you can have your parents pick out your future spouse. I'm not sure I've ever had a girl raise her hand for the parent selection option. Then I ask them this question, who do you think might choose a better mate? You or your parents? I get a surprising number of hands shoot up on the parent option on that question.

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And I asked them why they say things like my parents might be more insightful or I might not be very objective. That's my paraphrase of their love can be blind comments. Others say they might pick someone who's more compatible. So the bottom line I say is, while your parents might choose a better mate for you, you want the choice, right? You want to choose whom you'll be glued to more than that. You want to be of all the women on this planet picked out by that young man to be his, they smile with twinkling eyes in their heads nod. I suggest maybe that's how God feels too were not his image.

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Bearing storm troopers, either allowing us to choose places. Great value on us and being chosen, communicate something special to our creator with choice comes responsibility. How many times have you heard your parents say that? Returning to the text Genesis tells us the woman was convinced the fruit looks so fresh and delicious. So she ate some of the fruit. I've had boys in the class address the girl saying, see, it's your fault. I asked them to read the next phrase. She gave some to her husband who was with her. This entire conversation went on with both Eve and Adam present.

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I tell my students, I think I know what was going on here with Adam and Eve in this temptation scenario, I asked them if they know the rules of etiquette for a man, when he is walking a woman down in the busy street, I tell them the man is to take the traffic side. Then I ask if they know why some say so he can protect her from cars, you know, be a hero guy and push her out of the way. At the last moment, it actually dates to a time before indoor plumbing, people would go to the bathroom in chamber pots. When those pots were full, they would, how shall I say this? Delicately pitched the contents out their window. Following the laws of physics.

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Those pitching the contents out the second or third floor would miss the damsel next to the building and hit her escort closer to the street. That's what's going on here. I think Adam's thinking if this serpent is throwing his chamber pot, I want it to hit her first. I then take the student's back to the first verse of Genesis three. Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit of the garden? This temptation starts with a question. I tell them on the test. I'm going to ask them this question. What was the essence of the sin of Adam and Eve? No, I mean really get to the bottom of it on the surface.

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Students will say they ate the fruit. I say, dig deeper. Another student will say they disobeyed God's command in chapter two to leave that tree alone. I say, dig deeper. Why did they disobey that command? They sit there and think like when I asked Siri a question and she says, I am working on it, a student will say, they thought God was keeping something from them. And I will say, dig deeper still. Why? What were they thinking about God that he would keep something from them. I then asked them the question. If you could just ask God one question and get a straight answer.

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What would that be? Their responses are like that onion too, from superficial things like from important, but superficial things like what should I do with my life to deeper things? Like why does my mom have cancer? Then I tell them what my question would be. It would be this God. Are you good? Do you love me? And always have my wholeness, my best interests at heart. If his answer was Tim, I always have your best at the heart of all I do. I think I could handle anything that life threw at me. I could handle a knock on the door and the headmaster saying, could I see you a minute?

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Mr. Nelson your wife for one of your kids was just killed in an accident or the doctor calling saying Tim it's malignant stage four based on teachings of scripture for the rest of the 1200 pages and observing the history of people since day one and looking at my 60 years on this planet, I believe Satan and his team of bellboys uses the same strategy. He gets us to doubt that God is good, always for our best and wholeness, doubting God is good and has our best in mind. We are convinced God is withholding things from us. When they ate the fruit, the text tells us their eyes were opened.

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00:06:23

They saw they were naked and ashamed and they hid. Remember the edge piece strayed. We strayed away from God. We hid from him. We left guide. He didn't leave us. My Bible labels. This passage, the fall it's the wheels coming off creation in our relationship with God and each other. And it brought tragic consequences. We'll examine those consequences in our next wordpicture.