Genesis 2:4-3:24

"...but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."  (Gen. 2:17)

Anyone else think that Adam and Eve took Him literally: that as soon as they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they'd drop dead right there?  I always thought so: eat and you drop dead right there.  But that's not what God had planned: death would in fact come upon them, because up until that time it was a rather foreign concept.  But after they ate it, they were looking death in the face.  For the first time, death was a certainty.  Because of their actions, God cut them off from the tree of life, their sustaining source, and escorted them out of Eden.

But, in a way, you can in fact look at it that they began to die that day.  A really good movie (but an older one) is Renaissance Man.  Anyone seen it?  I like it.  In it, a washed-up ad man takes a job from Unemployment Services to be a teacher for struggling Army recruits in boot camp.  At first, he doesn't take it seriously and wastes a lot of time, but for a lack of anything better to do, he begins to teach them Shakespeare's Hamlet.  At the end, he gives them a test.  And one of the recruits makes a very interesting observation in regards to the gravedigger who went to work the day Hamlet was born: he said, "If you think about it, the day you were born, you start to die."  Can you see the truth of it?  Though you are just born and fresh in the world, you are one day closer to your death.  Adam and Eve faced just such a moment in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  At this point, they had sinned in disobeying God, and also becoming aware of what evil was and able to choose it or desire it.  Before, they were free from evil, innocent, and free to take from the tree of life.  But once they had sinned, they were separated from God: physically and spiritually.  No longer could they walk in the Garden with the Lord, and death was the punishment, even spiritual punishment.  The day they sinned, for the first time they were one step closer to their death.

It might seem harsh that God threw them out of the Garden and condemned them to death.  That it wasn't the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was the direct result of their death, but instead being cut off from the tree of life that eventually killed them.  Remember, though, that sin spiritually separates us from God.  If God had allowed man to continue to eat of the tree of life, to continue to live and live and live in their sin, there would never be payment for our sin.  And we'd be permanently separated from God.  Because death was allowed to come into the world through Adam, Christ was able to die, and eventually bring life back into the world.  Check it out: it's all in Romans.

Tomorrow's reading: Genesis 4:1-5:32