AND IF YOU LOVE JESUS AND THE LIFE HIS SACRIFICE HAS PROVIDED YOU SHOULD BE TOO- Gen.3:22
HAPPY PASSOVER!
Instead of condemning them. We should be thanking them. Because by eating the fruit they unknowingly were doing the absolute perfect will of God. By doing this they have made it possible for all mankind to have a personal relationship with God.
Oh, I know if you’ve spent any time in church that you have been taught that it is their fault that we all suffer death as a punishment for their sin. And are no longer in the garden paradise God intended mankind for.
And you think that garden paradise is enough because you don’t understand that God made us for so much more. He made us for fellowship! Something that was impossible as long as mankind remained in that so called “garden paradise”.
The story we read in the Bible is very different from the one most are told in church. Especially on their most holy day of “Easter”. Oh yes, they sinned when they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they were sent from the garden when their eyes were opened and they could see that they were naked.
But, this is where the story dramatically departs from the one you are told in church. Because not only was their eyes being opened a blessing that could now be used by them as they continued growing in their new found ability to discern between good and evil as Paul writes in Heb.5:14 is the blessing for those who mature in their faith toward God. But, the reason they were sent from the garden, as well as the reason they ultimately died, was in truth for theirs and for our benefit.
We will pick up the story here so I can show you why this is true.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 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.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
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.
This passage may not say in so many words, and they may not have known at that time that this is what they were choosing. But, what they did when they decided to eat the fruit, even though they did not know it yet, was part of God’s plan to make it possible for them and their offspring to know God personally. To become a child of God and not just a part of His creation.
And it set in motion the events that would lead to the Passover. In what would be the culmination of God’s plan that would bring Jesus into the world. For the purpose of joining with mankind in our mortality and death. So that through faith in Jesus we could join with Him in eternal life and immortality.
We know all of this was part of God’s plan, and not just something God had a plan B for as a work around, because of what Peter tells us in 1Peter1:18-20.
“18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”
You see, as long as they remained in the garden there was no way for them to be made children of God. And to know God in a personal way. Because as long as the man remained in the garden he was only natural, and not spiritual.
This is why Paul says in 1Cor.2:14, “12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Since Jesus told them in John4:24 that God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And Paul plainly taught in 1Cor.15:46 that Adam and Eve were “not spiritual, but natural” when God made them.
Not only were they not able to relate to God spiritually when they were placed in the garden. They also had no way of knowing that this was even necessary, or possible. Or that a personal relationship would mean they would have something we now know as eternal life.
Today men that do have the knowledge of good and evil, something the Bible says in Genesis.3:22 Adam and Eve did not possess until after they ate the fruit, even consider such a thing to be “foolishness”. But, as Paul says in 1Cor.1:25 even “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Why? Because Paul tells us in 2Cor.12:9 that it is in our weakness that He is made strong in us. And in our foolishness that God is made wise in us. And this is exactly where God wants each one of us to come to so that we can receive His grace. Knowing from James4:6 that God resists the proud but gives abundance of grace to the humble.
Grace that is His love in action that God showed through Jesus coming as a man to join with us in our mortality. So that we can join with Him by faith in His immortality… and eternal life.
This is why we need to be thanking Adam and Eve for eating the fruit. Not condemning them. Because without it men would still be mortal. Still dependent upon eating from the tree of life in the garden to keep from dying. Instead of passing through death into eternal life because of a personal relationship in our trusting in Jesus and His resurrection.
This is what Passover, what many have been taught to know as Easter, is really all about. It has nothing to do with the fertility goddess of Easter, Ishtar. Or rabbits that lay eggs and all that most people do to celebrate this day.
But, the name Easter is actually appropriate because it speaks of the same paganism the church uses to define why Jesus had to die, and what Passover is about to them. It is much the same as the pagan worship defined in the worship of Moloch. A bloody and torturous death of the innocent required to appease God’s wrath.
But, we are not pagans. And we do not worship as those who trust in Moloch.
What Passover is really about for those of us who know the Jesus of the Bible has everything to do with God coming as a man so He could join with man in our mortality and death. Being the same flesh in every way that we are. So that He could be tempted in every point just as all men are. Yet without sin.
So that He can comfort and identify with all men who are tempted. That being joined with us in our mortality He suffered the same death all men die. So that His resurrection is our resurrection. And His life is our life, when we put our faith in Him.
This is why Passover. Not because Adam did something really bad that brought God’s wrath upon all Adam’s progeny. For which Jesus was sent to take God’s final and ultimate punishment in our place. But, because God’s love is so great that He made our free will the determining factor in whether we will be saved or not.
Free will because without it God knows any love we would show toward Him would be just a computer doing what it was programmed to do. Free will because what Satan intended for evil, God in His great plan and by His great love for us works out for good. And also because God wanted our love and trust in Him to be the same kind of love that He has for us.
Love that is freely given and freely received. He will not accept any other. For God is love.
So thank you today Adam and Eve for eating the fruit as we celebrate Passover. Because it made the way possible for me to choose of my own free will to not only trust in Jesus when I heard the gospel. But, also made it possible for me to know Jesus as my Creator who loves me more than I can know while I see through the glass darkly.
Passover is the day that the Lord has made. And we who know Him rejoice and are glad in it. And you can too.
Did you know that with your free will you too can choose to know Jesus? To trust in Him and His resurrection. To have eternal life today. And immortality at the resurrection. Simply by confessing with your mouth the Lord Jesus. And believing in your heart that He has raised from the dead.
Do this and Jesus will create in you a spirit that you never had before. Do this and you will be made a child of God and heir to His kingdom. Do this and Passover will have fulfilled its meaning in your heart. Do this… and I will see you there or in the air!
