Now that is a good question. The sort of question you have to be smart to even ask. That's the type of question that you don't even think to ask while you're busy studying the specific fruit that was eaten by Adam and Even for 40 years of your life while the most important questions lay unasked in your mind.
Anyway, that was a few months back, but just recently I was rereading the story of Adam and Eve (I've been stuck there, blissfully because I love it, for about a year and a half...I've written other blogs about it, written a very long poem about them and love to hear about them). It's the beginning, ya know? Our genesis.
Wow, I keep getting sidetracked. I started to think about her question, too. Pastor Steve, along with everyone in the bible study offered amazing insight into this and I left with new knowledge of the same Word I've been reading over and over. I love that. I was reading the account of what happened (found in Genesis 2) and I think that it was always meant to be this way. I don't think they were always MEANT to eat of the fruit, God wanted them for Him (bad grammar, but it rhymed). But he KNEW it would happen.
So, when did that thought enter their minds? That's my real question...
God gave Adam instruction and said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat."
After this instruction and providing Adam with a helper, the serpent enters. What I noticed (I'm FINALLY getting to it) is that only after God gives them instruction, after He gives them a chance to disobey, after he gives them a choice, does the serpent slither in. He was always there, but we'd never heard anything about him until after these two things happened. Choice and helpmate.
And (sigh) when there is a choice, there is a wrong choice. Even when it's obvious (ya know...like booming-voice-of-God-obvious) there's a wrong one. God always intended for his children to choose, because He yearned for us to choose Him! But sometimes in just having a choice, we make ourselves little gods and get really high on making the decision.
But...God had to provide the chance to choose.
AND THAT, my friends, is when we see evil enter the scene. As soon as God gave a rule, the evil one knew that He could possibly turn them to death.
The serpent is at home within your choices.
I think what I learned from this and I hope you do too, is that the serpent always enters into a chance/choice/opportunity/rule. If you are making a decision, try to recognize that God is with you and the serpent is close by. Whispering doubts about your ability to follow the road that you know takes you to righteousness. The serpent doesn't care if you take the wrong direction or the almost right direction, there is just ONE road he doesn't want you traveling and that is the road where you follow the still, small voice of your Creator, your Father, your Lover.
The One who knows what's best for you and while He's already seen you make the wrong decision is begging you not to, anyway! The One who formed you with the dirt of the planet where the enemy lives, and then breathed HIS BREATH into HIS CREATION.
God is love and He loves us.
Love loves us!!!! Are you getting it? And even as we make the wrong decisions over and over and over, He loves us and fights for us.
***
I have one question that I haven't really thought through yet and I'll stick it here at the end with all of my rambling thoughts surrounding it. It's probably actually the same question that Alyson asked except in a different format, but I'll ask it anyway because I LOVE discovering the Word all over again.
***Why was the tree of knowledge even there to begin with? To offer a choice in itself? For God's children to be forced to choose between knowing God or knowing knowledge? If so, then we've failed. Sometimes whole churches have failed, in that they seek knowledge instead of just seeking God and FINDING HIM! I want knowledge, but I don't want it more than God. I like knowledge, but I YEARN for my Father***
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