10. The Serpent’s Lie and the Fall of Man
“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:28-29)
Notice the wonderful things God empowered the humans to be and do through His perfect Blessing. Everything mankind could ever possibly need was in that Blessing which was contained in and imparted by God’s perfect Word! God’s living Word that proceeds out from Him is His Wisdom and Authority and Ability. He is what all humans need to continue existing and to survive, succeed, prosper and exercise dominion over the earth. He is the one that empowers them to fulfill their God-given purpose and destiny. Humans are created and intended to be His image and likeness! And that commission authorized them, in the beginning, to act as God’s vice regents over the entire world. God blessed them with success, abundance and total well being. That was, and despite the destruction caused by the Serpent, it will always be, God’s ultimate vision, purpose and destiny for all of mankind. It will never be otherwise for those that are created and intended to be the image and likeness of God’s living Word. Perfection never changes; Perfection merely corrects whatever deviates and falters and restores it to its original perfect God-intended state.
Always remember that God’s perfect act of Creation and perfect Blessing for mankind are given by and through God’s perfect, eternal living Word. The Word, by nature and by Divine commission will always be everything to all of us. Within Himself, He contains the Fullness of God’s perfect Love for whatever He creates. The same Word we see creating and interacting with Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch and Noah in the early portions of Genesis, is the same living Word we see appearing to and interacting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the one that appeared to Moses in Exodus and later, to Joshua. And He is the one that became flesh and appeared on Earth as ‘Yeshua of Nazareth’ in the first century. Regardless of which appearance or what form God’s Word assumed, He is always the same Eternal Word of the living God. And that is why He ceaselessly calls those of us who hear His voice…to follow Him as His chosen disciples for the rest of our lives. If we follow, He will lead us back into the perfect fulfillment of our God-given inheritance. But if we disobey, we will remain lost and separated from God (Head-less) and barred from God’s Eternal Kingdom.
The Great Divide
As we will begin to see in Genesis 3 and 4, there will always be a great divide, a polarizing natural separation that exists between those who hear, believe and obey God’s Word, and those decapitated people who, like the serpent, continue to reject, ignore, contradict and disobey His Word. A state of ongoing antagonism and warfare naturally arises in God’s decapitated enemies against those over which God’s living Word has become Head and Lord. That division causes two distinct human races to emerge. The ‘Headed’ ones are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and the decapitated ones occupy the Serpent’s Realm of Darkness. And each human race sides with its respective master and is in conflict with the other. No human being is neutral. Whether we realize it or not, we are on one side or the other. No human is exempt from this warfare. Each of us is on one side or the other. This is what we begin to learn in Genesis.
Perfection gets it right the first time!
Because the original perfect act of Creation and the perfect Blessing are meant to express God’s perfect nature and character, God will never change or revoke what He ordained and intended for us from the beginning. Perfection gets everything right the first time. So regardless of how much damage rebellious angels and humans try to do to His plan, God’s perfection will win out. His perfect Word will be self-consistent. And He will do whatever is needed to make sure Creation fulfills its original God-intended purpose and destiny. At the end of human history, everything that abides under the Authority of God’s Word will end up sharing in and reflecting His eternal Perfection back to Him, just as it was designed to do.
Even if for a time, Sin has damaged Creation, it will not prevent God from having His way. He will recreate everything and it will be perfect after He deals with Satan, Sin, the powers of Darkness and their damage, once and for all. God will regenerate those who repent of Sin and come under the Authority of His Word. The Word will also recreate and perfect Heaven and Earth. We have His Word on it:
“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27)
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:18-23 Emphasis added.)
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” (Philippians 3:20-21)
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which Righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:10-13)
“He (the Word made flesh) is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven.” (Colossians 1:17-20 Emphasis added.)
“…and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’ Then He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.’” (Revelation 21:4-6)
Hopefully this understanding, that we are always covered by the full assurance of God’s ultimate Triumph, will help us remember why our utterly perfect Creator commands us to look to Him alone to be our one and only Source for everything. There is no need to look elsewhere. There is only one God. Even now, while many ignore Him and continue to operate habitually in their Sin-damaged, fallen state, worshipping false gods, the inevitable climactic confrontation, Judgment and eternal separation of the two different human races awaits us all.
“For the Land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the Land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native (Jew), nor the alien (non-Jew) who sojourns among you…” (Leviticus 18:25-26)
It is with this understanding to sustain and guide us that we can now begin to consider what God has revealed concerning the Serpent, and his lies and the Sin with which he corrupted and mortally damaged God’s Creation.
Headless in Sin
Sin (Head-lessness) is the state of separation from God that unbelieving disobedient creatures create for themselves when they disbelieve and disobey His living Word and the written Word that reveals Him and explains His significance to us. To live in Sin is to try to achieve and maintain separation from God in order to avoid being under the absolute Authority of His Word. Obviously those who abide as one with our awesome, perfect majestic God, abide under the dominion of His Word. Obedient creatures remain properly covered by and immersed in God’s Perfect Presence and receive everything He intends to give them. But God’s enemies are intent on trying to make the fallen, broken world system ‘work’ and ‘succeed’ in supplying their needs. So, in putting faith in the gods of their own imaginations, they are actually putting their faith in themselves, their own efforts and devices. They worship things God has created and freely gave to them; and they place those things above the Creator Himself!
The more we realize that God’s nature is perfect, almighty and unerring, the more grounded we can be in receiving and interacting with His Word’s perfect Presence and everlasting Lovingkindness. We can walk out our lives in the true and certain knowledge that ultimately, nothing will permanently abort, deter, misdirect or stop the flow of God’s will and purpose. God’s Word and Holy Spirit will break through every created obstacle and interference and lead His own back into God’s eternal, uncreated Perfection. The Word will see to it that everything God decrees will, in the end, be done to perfection:
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)
But when free-willed creatures, for whatever reason, follow Satan into his primal mistrust, hatred and rebellion against our Creator, they create a relational rupture, a separation from their one and only Life-Source – the Word of God. To abide in that decapitated state is to abide in living death. So this alienation from God is what we will now consider.
The Lie in the Garden
God has revealed through His Word that His nature is perfect, flawless and almighty. And since His Word is His perfect image and likeness that proceeds out of Him, He too is perfect. So no imperfect created being can stop the ultimate working out of God’s will and purpose. Perfection always succeeds; it always performs perfectly. Nothing imperfect can stop perfection from doing what it has set out to do. Nevertheless, Satan and the other rebel angels that joined his original rebellion against the perfect God, refuse to believe and obey His perfect Word. They will not have His Word rule over them. That is the rebellious attitude of Sin…it is ‘Head-lessness’. And as soon as it entered the picture it began to mortally infect and corrupt what God had created. Now God’s heavenly and earthly Creation is Sin-corrupted and is thus ‘broken’ and grossly misaligned and incapable of operating in the perfection for which God originally designed and created it. And so it will ultimately be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth (2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 21:1)
Instead of admitting that God’s Word is the Author and Creator of everything real, true and good, Satan and his dark angelic powers rejected the Light of God’s Truth. They keep trying to create an alternate, substitute ‘reality’ of their own in which they occupy ‘center stage’ and control whatever happens. They try to achieve this hopeless quest by fabricating an alternate ‘truth’ through which they try to over-ride and replace God’s Truth. They strive to displace and replace God’s Word, by pursuing an ‘Anti-Word’ or ‘Anti-Messiah’ (‘Anti-Christ’) agenda. They do whatever they can to eradicate God’s Word from human minds and hearts and strive to derail the fulfillment of what God has ordained and strive to enthrone Satan in God’s place. This vicious war for supremacy has raged since Satan’s original rebellion began. And every human is born into it and participates in it, on one side or the other.
After creating and blessing Adam and Eve, God placed them in the Garden to exercise dominion over their world. He set boundaries for them and warned them against doubting and disobeying and separating themselves from His Word and taking matters into their own hands. But Satan took the form of a serpent and began to turn them against God’s Word. He began to toy with the mind and heart of Eve, the mother of the human race.
“Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1b)
It was very easy for the serpent to confuse the woman and get her to start questioning God’s Word and doubting what He had revealed and commanded the humans to do. Satan’s probing caused a murky, smoky fogginess to develop in Eve’s mind and destroyed her original crystal-clear knowledge and understanding of God and His ways. As soon as he began to blur and distort God’s clarity in her mind, Eve’s heart lost its bearings and began to stray and lose its way. Soon she was far removed from her former perfect alignment with God’s Word. By questioning what God said Satan gave the impression that God’s Word can, and should be, questioned. But that too is a lie. It isn’t our perfect God who should be questioned; it’s those who question His Perfection that are imperfect and should be questioned. They should be doubted, examined and questioned. Why question Perfection? Should we not question whatever falls far short of it? By assuming the pose of calling God into question, Satan implied that he was the perfect one, not God. His attack went along these lines:
The Lie
“Woman, do you really understand what God said? What exactly was it? Are you sure that’s what He said? And even if He used those words, what did He really mean by them and how can you be sure you’ve got it right?’ Don’t you see what He’s really doing? He’s holding out on you so He can keep you under His control! So wise up! Are you going to allow Him to get away with that? Isn’t it time you took matters into your own hands and do what you think is best?”
By this means, the serpent clouded, twisted and finally, directly contradicted the Word of God. He got Eve to doubt God’s intentions and suspect His motives concerning her and her husband:
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Genesis 3:4-5)
By getting Eve to suspect and mistrust God’s motives, he manipulated her into viewing her own Creator as a malevolent opponent and competitor and a threat to her best interests. Thus the Serpent decapitated her. He separated her from God’s Word…the Source of Life. But Eve was made to be His image and likeness! Just like a man and his image in a mirror do everything the same, as one, so were the two humans made to reflect everything that God gave to them through His Word. They were to be one with what the Word was doing. The Word and the humans were to be like a Hand operating in a glove…one working unit. But now the Serpent had lured Eve’s mind into his trap of false conclusions and drove a wedge in Eve’s heart and separated her from God. This of course maimed and fatally wounded her ‘image and likeness of God’ nature, character and disposition. A mind and heart that are separated from God’s Word, instead of acting as one with Him, act in opposition to Him. And because Eve fell for the lies, she betrayed God and consented to act on the conclusions her very limited mind had reached. So the Serpent tore her away from God spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. In her heart of hearts, she was no longer God’s image and likeness; instead, she allowed herself to ‘morph’ into the Head-less image and likeness of the serpent! Like Satan before her, Eve now took matters into her own hands and trusted in her own, very limited understanding, perceptions, feelings and impressions. She ignored the revelation and instructions of God’s Word and substituted her natural, self-centered perspectives, impressions, suspicions, feelings, appetites and desires:
“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3:6)
Her new anti-God, self-governing view of the forbidden tree appealed to and aroused a deviant natural flesh hunger within her natural God-given appetites. Her independent imagination began to assume that the fruit of this tree would satisfy her sensibilities and expectations and meet her needs apart from God. As the serpent dangled the attractive ‘bait’ before her…the false hope of being able to rise to a level of equality with God arose within her. If she could achieve God’s level of wisdom and ability, He would be irrelevant and unnecessary. The humans could take His place and become just as independent and self-determining as the Serpent appeared to be! So without realizing what was happening, Eve became hopelessly entrapped in the coils of the serpent. And he dragged her as far away from her true Life-Source as possible. Then Eve aided and abetted the Serpent by prevailing on her husband to follow her into sure and certain spiritual and physical death.
“The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 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 will surely die.’” (Genesis 2:15-17)
A Broken World Filled with Broken People
When Satan drove his delusional wedge against God into the innermost heart and soul of the first man and the woman, he showed his true colors. This demonic, anti-Word spiritual being divides God’s creatures from their Creator. In a very real sense, He ‘decapitates’ humans from their true Head…God’s living Word. And that is instant death. Before Satan began to twist the Truth and replace it with lies, all of Creation served as God’s image and likeness under Adam’s image and likeness of God administrative dominion. Everything in Creation, except for the powers of Darkness, was one with God and one with itself. God was the Head, and Creation was like a physical ‘Body’ to Him, embodying and revealing Him in time and space.
But when Satan got the humans that God had placed in charge of the earthly domain, to forsake God’s Word in favor of his Truth-twisting word, he was able to infect their human nature with a deadly virus. He ‘hacked’ a genetic defect into their human nature. This divisive mechanism drives human minds and hearts away from God, away from their true selves, and away from each other. Even when they try to unite and love each other and cooperate in corporate ventures, sooner or later that genetic defect comes into play and then they change and turn against each other and break apart, over and over again. The death that Sin caused in them, continues to reveal itself.
When Adam and Eve heard God’s Word ‘walking in the Garden’, seeking them out so that He could meet their current, dire needs, they hid from Him! And by blaming his wife for ‘making him’ do what he did, he revealed the separation from his wife that had already taken place in his heart. Before their fall into Sin, the Word and the Spirit of God created and maintained everything and everyone in perfect synchronized unity. But now that they were under the domination of this lying, divisive, demonic spirit, the polarity of God’s Creation was reversed. It changed from an inborn tendency to remain united in love with God and with itself, to a compulsion to suspect, separate and compete. Suspicion, conflict and enmity fractured the relationship the humans had with God. And it separated them from each other, and also from the world God had commissioned them to tend, protect and manage. Everything began to come apart once Creation had been ‘decapitated.’ The Serpent was then easily able to begin to ‘dismember’ the rest of the decapitated Body. And He continues to do it to this day.
“…many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.” (Mt. 24:5-7)
When God’s Word articulated the curses that now afflicted the Serpent and the humans and the earth He had put under their administration, He was confirming the reality of the tragedy against which He had warned them: ‘You will surely die!’ That’s what He told them and now, thanks to their obedience to the Serpent, it had happened. And the division and separation Satan had caused between God and his Creation were fatal, just as God had warned. So now the Word confirmed the separation that now existed between the woman and the man, and between mankind and the fallen, broken world they would now all have to live in and endure:
“The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life; and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
“To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’”
“Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:14-19)
Living Death
Now the whole human race is infected. And that contentious, divisive, destructive ‘virus’ is passed on from father to child. Our nature is no longer God-reflective and corporate and loving; instead, it has degenerated into self-adoring radically independent, paranoid competitiveness. In this fallen, broken world, human relationships are always flawed and prone to strife. Even what we call intense, personal ‘love’ is corrupted by an incessant selfish competitiveness. Our natural polarity is now self-centered instead of God-centered. We are self-serving, rebellious, controlling, manipulative, predatory, and very destructive. We destroy ourselves and others in a variety of ways. In our natural state, we lack the necessary ingredients needed to enjoy and sustain wholesome, healthy, productive and fulfilling interaction with God and each other. We inherited the ‘wages’ of Sin which are perpetual frustration, disappointment, emptiness, destruction and desolation resulting in Death. And all of that decapitated existence and activity are what Scripture describes as ‘Flesh.’ And so there is always a deadness and a thrust toward death in everything that flesh tries to do.
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:5-10 Emphasis added.)
“After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” (Matthew 15:10)
“Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:23-25 Emphasis added.)
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:1-7 Emphasis added.)
How God Reacted to the Sin of Adam and Eve
Just as God had warned, the moment the humans fell into the state of Sin, they incurred the death penalty that comes as a result of separating from the Word of God, the Source of all life. And a most horrible, chilling, agonizing realization came over the man and the woman. They were no longer covered by the reflection of God’s Perfection. They could no longer be filled with and reflect back God’s Glory. Now they were naked! The utterly malicious, demonic lie, into whose trap they had fallen, killed their original ability to rest and live and operate as the ‘image and likeness’ of the perfect God. They could no longer know or interact with Him in the original intimacy and union they once enjoyed. Now they lived in the Darkness of the Serpent and were aliens, incompatible strangers and opponents to God. Now, all they could think of doing was to try to hide their shame from themselves, from each other, and from God.
But do you remember the Perfection of God’s Original Creation and Blessing that Genesis has already revealed and established? Everything God intends will come to pass regardless of this horrible disaster. It will happen because Almighty God is PERFECT! His original Creation contained everything that would be needed to bring it to perfect fulfillment. Each creature had everything given to it to enable it to fulfill its purpose. That included the human race. The Original Blessing our perfect God gave to us was and is and will always be …Perfect. His Word contains everything we will ever need to fulfill our God-given purpose and destiny. So nothing can change or deflect or destroy or stop its fulfillment, as long as we continue to look to and draw everything we need from God’s perfect living Word, the Word is our Perfect Blessing. He contains all the Fullness of God. So to have Him and to be able to draw from Him, is to have everything…to perfection.
So in essence, nothing essential really changed, regardless of how far short of the mark Adam and Eve fell. Whatever they would need along the way of their story with God was already factored in and provided by their perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator. In His eternal perfect wisdom He already knew what was going to happen. He knew what they would need. And He had already given all they would need to them through His perfect living Word, The Blessing. So in various texts of Scripture, our awesome God gives commands and instructions to the disciples of His Word, so that His Truth can reconfigure them back into His own image and likeness:
“Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. ‘But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by Evil, but overcome evil with Good!” (Rom. 12:17-21 Emphasis added.)
So after they sinned and were blasted and disoriented and severely damaged by Sin’s effects, God sent His Word after them to ‘overcome Evil with Good’. He came to be to them what they were missing. He came to be their Salvation, Restoration, Cleansing and Covering and Forgiveness as well as anything else they would ever need. And since they would now have to live in this fallen, broken, disfigured world in their fallen, broken, disfigured state while the fullness of God’s Plan continued to run its course toward eventual Fulfillment, God sent His living Word to accompany and provide for and protect them, and their descendants, every step of the way. He made sure that we would not remain in that terrible state forever. So after they fell, the Word came after Adam and Eve, to give God’s perfect mercy, lovingkindness, protection and provision to them:
“Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:20-24 Emphasis added.)
God demonstrated and proved to Satan and the powers of Darkness and to all of His Creation, just how perfect and true, changeless and faithful He really is. And He will continue to do it to, and in, and through the life of every man and woman of every generation that will hear His voice, embrace His Word, and abide by His revelations and commands.
The problems that the human race continues to wrestle with in endless frustration and eventual desolation do not originate in the fact that God made us this way. Sin did this to us. Nor are the problems and conditions a sign that God has changed or turned against us or has abandoned us. The problems and maladies persist because we changed and we are the ones that turned away from Him! And that is why He sends His precious Word to pursue us…to reconcile with us and get us to come back to Him. And the Word is relentless because He is changeless. He will never stop pursuing us, never stop trying to get us to stop running away and turn and come to Him so that He can take us back home, where we belong. He will pursue us to the edge of eternity! But then, when we pass into timelessness and its permanency…we will live with the results of the final choice we made in relation to God’s living Word with our God-given free will.
“‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the LORD, ‘though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.’
“Truly, the mouth (Word) of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 1:18-20)