Happy New Year!

January 1 – The Forbidden Fruit – Genesis 2:16, 3:1-7

After God created the plants, animals and Adam, He put Adam in the garden to cultivate and keep it.  He said, “From any tree of the garden you may eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."   We all assume that the tree was an apple tree.   Growing along with those apples there may have been some peaches, quince, a bunch of grapes, or how about some pears, with feta cheese?  Well, feta cheese doesn’t grow on trees so Adam and Eve probably didn’t eat that in the Garden.   But it is tasty with fresh pears.  Do try some soon. 

Back to Adam and Eve.  Verse 6 tells us that Eve saw that the tree was good for food.  Eve was enticed, seduced, and tricked into eating that forbidden fruit.  She wasn’t even around yet, ie, created, when God gave the orders not to eat of that “tree of knowledge of Good and Evil” and in Genesis 3:3 she tells that cunning snake that she and Adam are “not to eat of that tree or touch it lest you die.”  Where did the “not touch it” come from?  Do you think Adam conjured that up to prevent Eve from even going near it?   Note that she and Adam were together.  Adam saw Eve bite into the fruit.  I imagine that he wanted to reach out and knock that fruit out of her hand.  Was he maybe more than an arm’s length away?  Maybe he too was under the spell of that ole serpent?  At any rate, “he took the fruit” that Eve offered him.  As he raised it to his lips he could smell the freshness and yet he knew that their lives would change if he ate it.  Did he understand what it meant to die?  He saw Eve bite into that fruit.  He loved Eve, his helpmate, his companion, his friend, so much that he willingly took that fruit, looked her in the eye and bit into it.  Crunch.  The juice ran out of that fruit and into his mouth, touching the taste buds on his tongue, bringing with it a cascading flood of knowledge of good and evil.  He may have momentarily thought, “Oh, what have I done?” and the serpent probably cackled and laughed, “Now the world is mine!”  But God had a greater plan.  One for us to dine at His Heavenly throne room banquet.  His son, Jesus, would be the Host, but first Jesus would have to give up His life. 

Adam, like Christ, gave of himself for Eve.  Like Adam, Jesus loved His bride enough to give up His desire for an unbroken relationship with the Heavenly Father in order to bring His bride into the right relationship with that same Heavenly Father.  They both sacrificed themselves for us.

Prayer---Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to see things your way---and to be obedient---to the point of "not touching" things you want us to stay away from. Guide us in this new year--to draw closer to you.