Paradise Lost and Found

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

PARADISE LOST AND FOUND

Gen 3:20-24

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.

NIV

 

Because the Hebrew word that is used in giving the woman the name Eve, it means life, or the giver of life, as this verse describes Eve as the mother of all the living. From the record given to us, we know God intended Adam and Eve to multiply in numbers and subdue the earth to rule over all the animal kingdom. Indeed, by giving the woman the name Eve, God gave Adam the right to name all the things he had created and indeed all living people must trace their ancestry back to Adam and Eve. Still, they were no longer welcome in the paradise the LORD God prepared for them. They were cast out into the world to make their way, clothed now in what God had given them. He guarded the paradise with a flashing or flaming sword and cherubim. Interestingly, the flaming sword is the Word of God, and cherubim in Hebrew is an imaginary person. Nevertheless, Adam would not be able to find his way back to the paradise of God, in fact, no one would until the right time, when the Father sent the Son to make a way back to the paradise he had prepared for us. For now, the man was banished, and he no longer could eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. Once again, Jesus carried his cross, the tree upon which he would give his life for us, and as we partake in that tree, accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we now can regain eternal life. It must have been sad for Adam and Eve to be banished from that perfect place and to live in the wilderness of the world, although the world still must have been nice in some sense, as God had caused all the plant life to spring forth from the ground, and all living things lived in harmony, for all of them were herbivores. Still, paradise was lost to them and now Adam needed to work the ground for his food. It is interesting why Adam had to work the ground when he still could eat the fruit from the trees unless there were no such trees outside of paradise. However, we do have many fruit trees today, so why did Adam have to work the ground is still strange. We will see the two sons Abel and Cain had different tasks with Cain working the soil. We are not told what kind of crops the first humans produced, but we also will see that Abel oversaw the flocks, so if it was sheep, enough time had passed for them to multiply into flocks. However, we are now just with Adam and Eve outside the paradise of God. But now we can reenter this paradise through faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father, for giving us the opportunity back into paradise.