Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 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. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
In Eden we had this great potential...We were with God then and listened to Him...We were so full of hope, so full of years to come, so full of potential, so full of Spirit...And most of all so close to God...We were in Paradise...Humanity was something then, but we lost that something, and it was something of great importance...So something happened one day and it became a sad day...Falling from Grace, was one of the saddest days for humanity...Death arrived that day in a fruit that we were told not to eat...And when they ate the fruit the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized different things that they had never realized before...And there are times when we learn things and learn of new and different things that is not necessarily a good thing...This was one of those times...We lost our closeness to God...We still had Him, but things had forever changed...
Believing in God helps one see that humanity has drifted from the Very One who created us...We thought that we were smart enough to do our own thing, our own will, and our own way...Within our own humanity, we can believe that we are made in God’s Image and that is one of a Sacred Honor and so created by the One who is Holy...Something went wrong that on that day, and because of that one day humanity continues to drift away again and again from a Father who LOVES us...And when we ate the forbidden fruit we became less...We became less in the sense that instead of listening to Him and doing His will, we thought we could do it another way, or our way...We now are imperfect beings...We are imperfect beings, trying to get back to our place in Eden...We have now seen evil, and we would like to escape it, and get back to the Garden...
And God knew that man could not go it alone...So He would send us help...
So God sent us One who was Perfectly Human, when He came and dwelt with us on earth...For the One He sent did not sin...He was and is our Messiah and Savior...He was One and the only One who never did anything wrong...And He was obedient to do all of God’s will...And He, a Perfect Being, was oddly enough killed by imperfect beings on a cross for something I am not quite sure of...But we certainly killed Him...He was hung on a cross for our imperfections, and not His or anything that He did wrong...And so He was killed on a cross for our imperfections, our flaws, our sins...