Gen. 3:10-11  "And he (Adam) said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.  And he (God) said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?  Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

God spoke to Adam.  When God speaks to a human, that person knows it.   Remember the moment that God spoke to you and called you to respond to him.  You knew.

Adam knew.  God was talking to him.  Instead of being glad that God was coming to the garden to see him,  Adam was afraid.  Adam didn't want to see God right then.

When  my children were small and did something they were told not to do, the fellowship with me was broken.  I was not happy with them.  I wasn't interested in why they did it,  I just wanted them to promise me that they wouldn't do that again.  They had broken the fellowship, but they had not broken the relationship.   I was still their Mother.


When fellowship has been damaged, the only way to fix it is to apologize.  The only way to fix your fellowship with God is to repent.  Tell him how sorry you are.  Admit your guilt.  

I wonder what would have happened if Adam had fallen on his knees and begged God to forgive him? But he didn't.  He blamed someone else for what he did.  Adam was not repentant.

Gen. 3:8-9  "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.  And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"

It must have been a dense forest for them to think they could hide from God.  God knew where to look.  He knew where they were.

In the cool of the day.  I like that.  It means that they had temperature variation in Eden.  It wasn't a bland place with static weather.  At some point in the day, it cooled off.

God walked.  I like that, too.  God was in the garden.  God walked.  Now just how that happened, I have no Idea.  Did he take on the form of the man he would someday become--Jesus?   Jesus is God.  He was here in the beginning.  (That is just  thinking point.)  I really don't think I will ever understand all I have read about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  They are One.

In John 1:1-3 John tells us,  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.  Do you remember that old hymn--In the Garden?  "And he walked with me and he talked with me, and he told me I was his own..."

So God said, "Where art thou?"  Where are you.  Where ever you are, God will find you.  He knows exactly what you are hiding behind.  And you can be sure it's going to take more than fig leaves to cover up whatever you've done.  It's going to take blood.

And so they both were pronounced dead.  They just didn't know what that meant yet.  But their innocence was shattered.   But wait, it gets worse.

Gen. 3:7  "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons."

The serpent was right about one thing:  Their eyes were opened.  But the serpent was wrong about everything else.  They were not gods.  They were "dead man walking"--as they call the prisoner who is condemned to die.

They were reduced to fear, crawling about finding leaves to cover up the very part of themselves that God had intended for their good, for their pleasure.  When he created them, the first words that he said to them was to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.  Have sexual relations with each other.  You were joined together:  bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  (Gen. 2:23)  God wanted more of them.  He wanted Adam and Eve to re-plenish the earth.

God intended us to be joined.  He intended for our reproduction to be under his blessing.  He intended for us to be faithful.  To be one with each other.

But now, Adam and Eve are ashamed of their reproductive parts, hence the need for an apron.

And then they heard something.  And they hid.
   

Gen. 3:4-5  "And the serpent said unto the woman,  Ye shall not surely die:  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

Half truths:  The evil one spoke in half truths.  Give someone a truth to cover up a lie.

1.  "Ye shall not surely die."  Death came.   They lost access to the Tree of Life.

2.  "I know what God thinks and knows."  The serpent knew one thing.  That the tree was forbidden.

3.  "On the very day you eat, your eyes will be opened. "  Opening your eyes, meant that the serpent knew something that God didn't.  God said nothing about "Opening your eyes".        

4.  "You will be like gods, knowing good and evil."  There is one God.  Mankind will never be like God.

The devil, satan, evil one, always tells half truths that lead you astray if you listen.  Sin sounds good.  Looks good.  May even be very satisfying in the moment.  But later...there is a payoff.

In Romans 3:6, we find that, "The wages of sin is death."  Wages were not gold or money.  The people Paul was writing to all knew what a wage was.   It was a script of some sort that, for instance, Roman solders were paid with.  When they went back to Rome they could turn the script in for money.  You couldn't spend script.

Script was something that paid off "later".  In other words, the pay off "later" (the wage of sin) was death.  The pay off later of sin is eternal death.

The serpent ( the beautiful winged creature) asked Eve a question.  Eve listened.  Then she answered:

Gen. 3:2-3  "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,  God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it,  (she should have stopped right there) neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

I guess Adam told her about the tree.  (Remember, Eve wasn't even created when God told Adam about the  trees.)  I guess Adam told her they were not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or they would die.  Did Adam tell her that it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil?  Or as Eve told the serpent, it was "...the tree...in the midst of the garden."   Either way, she knew there was a specific tree in the garden from which she wasn't supposed to eat.

Were they standing by the tree?  Or did she follow the serpent to where the tree was--further adding to the first thing she did that was wrong--listening to the serpent?  One step at a time she was allowing herself to be led into temptation.  We do the same thing.  We listen.  We turn.  We look.  We touch.  We take a first step in a direction we ought not go.  One step at a time, we sin.  We do the thing God has told us not to do.

Then she did something that women (I'm a woman so I know how this goes,) seem to have particular difficulty with.  She made the story better.  She added something to the story to make it more dramatic.  She said "...niether shall ye touch it, lest ye die."  God didn't say that.  I don't know what Adam said.  Did he add the part about not touching it?  Or did Eve come up with that on her own?

Gen. 3:1  "Now the serpent was more subtil (subtle, sneaky) than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

Women love beautiful things.  Back in Gen. 2:9, God gave the garden some trees that were for beauty,  ("...pleasant to the sight...")  That was their only purpose.  The evil one knew  Eves' weakness.  The thing that you may not know is that the serpent was not a snake.  It was a beautiful winged creature--which was later cursed by God and forced to crawl on its belly and eat dust. (Gen. 3: 14)

Evil never appears wrapped in 'ugly'.  We are always tempted by something desirable.  Something that we want.  Something that we want to do.  Something that we have to have.  Something that makes us feel better than everyone else.  The forbidden things.  The evil one says, "What's so wrong with that?"

The serpent asked Eve a question.  It made her doubt.  Once you question what is the right thing to do, doing the wrong thing gets easier.

What in the world could be wrong with lingering, listening to a creature that looked so beautiful?

My husband likes to say to the young people we know, "Tell me who you are running with, and I'll tell you what you're doing."

We become like the people we listen to.

And Adam named the animals.   God gave him a job.  God  included man in his work.  He  wanted--he wants--fellowship with His creation.  (Interestingly enough, that pattern continues today.  God has included us.  We are the ones he has charged with the responsibility to spread His gospel to the world.  Christ is born;  He has died for our sins;  He is risen to make intercession with the Father.)

So Adam has Eve.

The animals have names.

The garden is full of trees and fruit vegetables and herbs.

The sun is shining.  No dreary rainy days.  The world is perfect and beautiful.

What else could you want.

Let's see how they can mess this up...the story of every person ever born--mess up your life.

Gen. 2:25  "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."

Let's see how they can mess that up!