Knowledge
is a two-edged sword. Solomon said;
Ecclesiastes 1:18 For in
much wisdom is much grief: and
he that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow.
What Adam and Eve
faced and what they did we often have faced and done. Many a young person has
not heeded the knowledge given to them by others to not touch the hot stove but
has gained the painful knowledge that comes from being burnt in disbelief and disobedience.
Man would have
done well to obey God rather than sought out the proof of what God said by
painful experience. Many a life has been shattered, diminished, ruined, or lost
by man’s sin nature.
True
knowledge, though, is different.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of
the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and
instruction.
Adam and Eve
sought knowledge of the first kind. Satan lied to them. They learned the tragic
consequences of disobeying God. This is not knowledge we should seek if we are
wise. Our trouble is so many false preachers and teachers making up what God
said and speaking falsely for Him that drives so many young people away from
church fellowship. Hatred of and contempt for women, bigotry, paranoia,
domination and control, and masochistic self-hatred are not of God and get in
the way of our obedience to Him.
In any event we
are called to obey Him, not test the limits of disobedience to see what
happens, dancing on the edge of the abyss to see how close we can get before we
fall into it.
Adam and Eve chose
disobedience and all of creation has suffered for it so that God could redeem
us Himself and that mankind in eternity would know that they did not do it
themselves but that it was God alone who saved them.
Adam and Eve
gained knowledge by disobedience to God and judgment rather than gaining
knowledge by obedience to Him and the joys of a personal relationship with
their Creator.
Eve gave the fruit
to her husband, Adam, who was with her, and he also disobeyed God. At that
moment they realized their disgrace, as conscience was revealed and the bitter
vision of knowing that they were undone, without honor, overcame them. As we
are wont to do, if indeed we have a conscience at all, they tried to hide their
shame and human frailty that had been exposed. Gone were the happy, careless
times of joy in God’s garden, the first couple enjoying each other and creation
without care or doubt. We mistake this time in our lives for attaining
adulthood, becoming a man or a woman, when, all too often, it simply reflects a
loss of who we were or could have been. When we follow the world, which is
Satan’s bailiwick (2Corinthians 4:4), with our desire to place
self-gratification and self-glorification above God and make it a sort of rite
of passage into full admission to the world we must take on that shame and
self-doubt, that uncertainty and, if you would, low self-esteem, we take steps
downward. Often, with each action after that we feel less and less that sense
of ‘all is possible’ for us and our choices become more and more limited and
less and less satisfying. Shame becomes a constant nagging companion and if we
become so hardened that we cannot feel it we just become numb and can only feel
a sense of disgust at who we are.
Some will try to
hide in an entertainment as an escape, some in a hobby or an employment or some
other activity, even hiding from God in church, while others drink or take
drugs to numb the pain of their existence. Some will become defiant and proud
of their sin, claiming it as a badge of distinction and self-justification,
thumbing their nose at God, so to speak. But, that point comes for almost all
people who are actually able to acknowledge it, that point when they feel that
they have lost something. It is a vague and uncertain pain or it may be a great
sense of grief. But it is a sense of loss nonetheless. The only real cure is to
trust Christ, to know that He loves you, to acknowledge both your love for Him
and His for you, and to depend on His righteousness and not your own for peace
with God and peace in your own soul.
They heard God,
the pre-incarnate Christ, the visible image of the invisible God, the express
image of His person as pointed out in the study on chapter 1, verse 3, with
whom they had known such sweet fellowship, walking in the garden, calling out
to them as He often did apparently. But this time they hid from His presence.
When we sin we often forgo our prayer, talking to God, and reading the Bible,
God talking to us, and hide from Him, because, if we are indeed believers, we
feel great shame and that we have let Him down. The more we continue to do
wrong the more we try to cut off His counsel and fellowship with Him until we
are the most miserable of persons.
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