The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-17 HCSB
This is where things messed up. God made man and He gave us free will. The bad thing with free will is that it is like putting a three year old in a room with a plate full of warm chocolate chip cookies and telling them not to eat any. Often times the temptation is too great. Now that room could be filled with really cool toys and maybe even other types of cookies and candy, but let’s face it, we gravitate to what we are not supposed to have.
This is what makes diets so hard, it’s like as soon as you get it in your mind that you are not going to eat a particular food or a particular type of food, you crave it, right? If you give in to that craving, you pay the consequences.
This is what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 3. The serpent crept in there and convinced them that they should eat from the one tree that God told them not to eat of. Now a lot of people like to lay the blame at Eve’s feet, but if a snake is creeping around, where is the man of the garden, just sayin’? The serpent, who we know to be Satan, convinced them that it would not hurt for them to eat just one little piece of fruit off of that tree. Sound familiar? Sounds like the story of my life to me. The devil has spent years telling me that this won’t hurt or that won’t hurt. Or God won’t care if I do this, He will understand. Or, it’s just a little sin it won’t matter. Well, it took me a while to figure this out, but the devil is a big fat liar. It does matter. There is no little sin. My sin separates me from God.
God gives me all I need, but still the devil tempts me and tries to convince me that I need more. Think about this, if Adam and Eve had not listened to the devil. If they had resisted him and submitted to God, the devil would have fled from them (James 4:7). We may all be living this ideal existence in this beautiful garden. But they didn’t, so because of their disobedience, they were not only thrown out of the garden and cursed, but the generations to follow were cursed and still are until this day. Painful childbirth is just one of those curses, you can read about the rest of them in Genesis 3. Their sin causes us to suffer.
That sounds unfair, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you what can make our suffering much worse, our sin. The devil tries to tell us that we can get away with our sin. We can’t get away with our sin any more than Adam and Eve could get away with their sin. God is still watching, He knows what we do, He even knows what we are thinking. But we do have a choice, just like they did. We can submit to sin or we can submit to God. Sin looks good and appealing and may even be good for a short time, but there is a terrible price to pay. Submitting to God brings a peace and joy beyond understanding and it’s everlasting.
God gave us rules to live by in His word (Exodus 20). They are not often so easy to obey, but with His help we can be faithful. Surrender yourself to Him, trust in Him to help you overcome temptation. Things today aren’t a lot different than they were in the beginning. We are still being tempted by Satan, but we still have a choice.
Turn to God today, surrender to Him, allow Him to help you overcome the devil’s temptation. Allow Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit and follow Him. You won’t be sorry you did, trust me on that one.
Have a great day!