Join us as we examine humanity’s first interactions with divine command and consequence in the story of Adam and Eve. Through an exploration of Genesis, we uncover the inherent complexity in what is often distilled to a simplistic moral lesson. This episode invites you to rethink conventional interpretations and challenges listeners to consider the significance of personal choice, divine intention, and the role of adversity in shaping human experience.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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If there’s one story in the Bible that is familiar to nearly everyone, it’s the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. For one thing, people who set out to read the Bible naturally start at the beginning and And the story doesn’t get real boring until you get to Leviticus, which is where a lot of people stop. A lot of times they make it about to Leviticus 6, and they just get lost, quit, give up. And sometime later they start over again, and since they want to start over again, they start with Genesis. No point in going back to Leviticus 6, is there? And they read the story of Adam and Eve all over again. So it would be a rare person who doesn’t know who Adam and Eve were and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. But this familiarity means that there are hundreds of different theories about Adam and Eve, none of them really compelling. Was the forbidden fruit an apple? It generally is taken for that. Or was it sex? Was the devil a snake? Well, I’ve advanced a few theories on Genesis myself. Everyone who believes in God is an implicit theologian. And who’s to say that your theories are not as good as anyone else’s? It’s good enough to direct your walk of faith. But you do want your theology to be informed, and you are willing to modify it as you learn, right? So why don’t we take a walk through the Garden of Eden and see if we can develop our own theory of the case? The story in question starts in Genesis 2, verse 7. And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living soul. And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So man was alone in the Garden of Eden. You have to assume that it was a beautiful place. You have to believe that it was well designed. After all, the designer of the universe designed it, planted it, put it together, the Lord God. built Eden. Now a garden is by definition an intentionally designed layout of plants and trees and so forth. The place was beautiful and it was full of food. And there are those two trees in the middle of the garden. One wonders what they are all about. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God took the man and he put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it. For in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die. So man had work to do. Any garden will fall into disarray if it’s not kept up. Dress it, keep it. But a sinister element enters the picture here. There is a command and a consequence of breaking that command. You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Now notice that I said there’s a consequence of breaking that command. I did not say penalty. There is a difference between the two, and the difference is important. But the first thing you need to know about this passage is that the English word evil is the wrong word here. The English word evil denotes something that is morally bad, that is sinful, that is wicked. The connotations are of things exceedingly immoral and wicked and even malicious. Whenever you see a movie that’s supposed to be a pictorial of evil movies, Well, it’s slavering at the jaws. It’s really nasty. It’s bad stuff. But the Hebrew word here translated evil includes no idea of immorality or malice. The Hebrew word is simply the opposite of good. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. A tornado is bad. You get one that’s about a mile wide or a half mile wide and walks its way through your community, you will say that something bad has happened to your community. But no one thinks that there’s any malice or immorality or wickedness. These are moral things. That is not included in the Hebrew word translated in your Bible, your King James Bible, as evil. A scripture that many ask about is Isaiah 45, 7, where God says, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord God, do all these things. Well, now, does God create evil? People want to know. Moral wickedness? Of course not. Notice this parallel structure that exists in this passage. First of all, he says, I form the light and create darkness. We have two opposites that are presented for us, light and darkness. Then the parallel structure, I make peace and create evil. So evil is the opposite of peace. A better rendering of the Bible verse would be, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create adversity. I, the Lord, do all these things. So, back to Genesis. This is not a tree of good and evil, that is, of good and sin. It is a tree of the knowledge of good and bad, whatever that may mean. But why was the tree there at all? I mean, if this tree is bad… If it’s dangerous, or let’s put it simply this way, if Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat of the tree, why did God put it there? And that, folks, may be the most important question in this whole sequence. And the Lord God said, it’s not good that the man should be alone. I’ll make a help for him. Okay, here we have a fundamental truth about the nature of man. It’s not good to be alone. Now, I don’t know about you folks, but I have long since figured that out for myself. But the point here is it’s good for us to know that we were designed to not be alone. Man’s a gregarious creature. We’re a social creature. We need to be with other people. But more than that, each of us needs to be matched up with one other person. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name. So Adam gave names to all cattle and the fowl of the air to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a help suitable for him. Now, none of this is to suggest that God thought he was going to find a help among the animals. If you read this carelessly, you almost get the impression, well, let’s see, not good for man to be alone. He needs a help suitable for him. And so we created a dog. And no, that’s not good enough. We created cats. That’s not good enough. We created horses. That’s not good enough. And as though through some trial and error, we kept looking, but no, we just never found a help for man. Well, that’s not really what is going on here. God never thought he would find a help among the animals. God had something other than dog in mind for a companion to man from the beginning. This has come to the place now, though, where he is going to do it. In Genesis 2, verse 21, And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, he made a woman and brought her to the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now here is an interesting question. Why did God make man first? Why not make woman first and just have her give birth to a man in the normal way? Well, you probably can think of many reasons why he might not have wanted to do that. Or better yet, while he was making man of the dust of the earth, why not just make two, male and female, and start them out on an equal footing? In other words, the first time Adam opens his eyes, woman is there and man is there for her. And they are equals in every way. The problem with this passage is that it puts man first and creates woman to help him. And there is no way that passage would be written like that now, in this century, at this time. That is, if men were writing a story about the origins of things. So you’re left with a dilemma. If the Bible is nothing but the work of ancient folklore… then you can believe that men wrote this story to subjugate women. But if the Bible is the record of God’s revelation to man, then this fact is something we have to deal with. Why did God do it that way? Well, we’ll advance our theory a little bit more after this break.
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Is life worth living? There may be times when you feel like giving it up, but there is never a sacrifice or act of suffering that is worthless or in vain. Write for a free copy of the program titled, Is Life Worth Living? Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll-free…
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1-888-BIBLE-44 Why then did God make man first and woman second? Well, every man since Adam has come from a woman. And since that’s true, well, then in the normal course of things, one would think women would dominate. Maybe God brought woman from man and then man from woman to even things out. At least that’s what some people think. I think those who call females the weaker sex are very short-sighted. They’re strong enough to have babies. Which one of you guys is ready to take that on? Why, if God hadn’t held women back, they might very well have ruled the world. And if you want to argue that the world would be a better place, I guess the only refuge I have is to fall back on the Bible and say, well, God must have known what he was doing. In verse 24, the story continues. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. You know, to be united in the flesh, one flesh, is taken by some to be a euphemism for sex, especially in the light of the next verse about nakedness. But one thing is clear enough, and that is that it’s God’s intent that a man cleave to his wife, once he gets married, that he leave his father and mother. In other words, that the old family ties are separated, and a new family is created every time. But one has to wonder about the remark that they were not ashamed of being naked. Why should they be? To be ashamed, you have to have a consciousness of something that was wrong, and this they did not have. But now the serpent enters the picture. The serpent, Genesis 3, verse 1, The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which God had made. And he said to the woman, The serpent did. Hmm. Has God said you shall not eat of every tree in the garden? It’s almost as though the serpent came on the scene and looked around and was surprised to see this one tree there. For if it hadn’t been there, I don’t think there would have been a question to have asked. He didn’t think, he didn’t expect the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I think, to be there. The woman said to the serpent, We can eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it lest you die. Ah, okay. Well, then I return to my original question. Why was the tree there at all? I’ll ask another question. Why was it in the midst of the garden? Why was it given centrality of place right along with the tree of life? This is an important question. It wasn’t there for decoration. God could have made a tree pretty without making it deadly. So he put it there for a reason. And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die. God knows that in the day you eat that tree, that your eyes shall be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and bad. Now I have heard it said that the serpent lied. And yet they ate the fruit, and everything the serpent said would happen, happened. Their eyes were opened, they knew good and bad, and they didn’t die. Now, you will argue, of course, that they died later, and you are right. But from their point of view, in the moments after eating the fruit, the serpent was entirely right. In fact, they lived for a very long time. Now, this premise of the serpent is fascinating. He said, you shall be as gods. What do you suppose that meant? Well, we don’t have enough information to complete the theory yet. Let’s go on. And when the woman saw… that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, a tree to be desired to make one wise. She took some of the fruit, and she ate it, and she gave it to her husband with her, and he ate. 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. I can’t help laughing when I think of Adam and Eve making aprons out of fig leaves. I visualize something like a hospital gown that covers the front but doesn’t do very much about the back. So here they are, covered in front and exposed in the rear, and I think there may be some symbolism in that somewhere. Generations of kids who read the Bible have been titillated by this story. What do you mean, they ask, they knew they were naked before eating the fruit? How could they have not known before? Didn’t they have hands, sense of touch, grope? What do you mean they didn’t know they were naked? Well, obviously what Genesis means is that their nakedness suddenly became significant to them, and it was not significant before. Some have opined that clothes are a possession, a status symbol, and that may have been some of the motive behind it. But I don’t know. Nakedness is a kind of vulnerability, which sometimes is important and sometimes it’s not. And I think Adam and Eve suddenly realized that they were vulnerable, and they hadn’t been vulnerable before. And then they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said, Where are you? This is a sad and charming story and revealing at the same time. Did God really not know what had happened? Now, here we are. We believe that God is omniscient. That means he knows everything. He knows everything that’s going on all the time, any place, everywhere. So he comes into the garden and says, where are you? Doesn’t he know? And did he not know what had happened? Did he really not know where they were hiding? Well, I suppose we would have to assume then that he was pretending not to know. Unless, of course, he had decided not to know. You know, there’s a certain charm in the realization that God is not a voyeur. He had given Adam and Eve privacy to be intimate with one another and hadn’t looked. Now, he could have, I suppose. God’s all-powerful. He is the creator. But I gather he chose not to. Otherwise, we have the image of a God coming into the Garden of Eden and pretending to deceiving Adam and Eve, making them believe that he didn’t know when in fact he really did. I think it’s much more charming to believe that he chose not to. And in many ways, much more in keeping with the character of God as we learn about him through the pages of the Bible day by day and page by page. And this also leads logically to the question as to whether the sin of Adam and Eve was sex. Now, does anyone seriously believe this? Yeah, I think they do. I just want you to think about it for a moment. God put Adam and Eve, two perfect physical specimens in the prime of life. Please take a moment and visualize. He put these two perfect people in the prime of life in the garden, naked, and told them to be fruitful and multiply. Right? And then… God got mad at them for having sex, right? Does that make sense to you? Well, my question is, how were they supposed to multiply by cell division? I would really kind of think that God expected them to do it the old-fashioned way, to have children. And Adam replied to God, who said, where are you? He said, well, I heard your voice in the garden saying, And I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. So now Adam is afraid of his best friend. God said, Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat? And the man said, The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate. And the Lord said to the woman, What have you done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I ate. This is the original, first time in history, of the passing of the buck. In a moment, we’ll consider the consequences of this and see if we can understand what it means. I’ll be right back.
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The consequences of all this were immediate and severe. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, above every beast of the field. Upon your belly you shall go, dust shall you eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. It shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In sorrow you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. So the woman would have children, and that’s good. She would have her children in pain, and that is bad. But you see, she had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. And unto Adam God said, Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife, and you have eaten of the tree which I commanded you to say, Don’t eat of it. Curse it as the ground for your sake. In sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you. You shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken. For dust you are. and unto dust you shall return. You’ll have food to eat, and that’s good. You’ll have to fight for every morsel, and that’s bad. You’re going to live a long time, and that’s good. But you’re going to die in the end, and that’s bad. But you see, Adam had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. Adam and Eve had made a choice. They had the choice to eat of the tree of life and live forever. Or they could eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, which would, in the end, take their lives. Now, why was the tree there? Why put them at risk? It was there because God wanted His children to be free to make the choice. They could eat of the tree of life and live forever. Or they could eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which basically means they go into the world, they experience good, they experience evil. We get to try things. We get to succeed. We get to fail. God wanted us to have the choice. Why was the serpent allowed to be there? I mean, surely he could have kept that stinker out of the garden, couldn’t he? No, no. The serpent was there because God wanted man to face the choice. We weren’t going to be allowed to slide by one way or the other. We actually had to come up against it, look at it, think about it, and decide. And right there is the fundamental truth about the Garden of Eden, the experience of Adam and Eve, and the trees, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It’s all about making choices. I’ve said before, God could have made a creature… that couldn’t sin. Well, He did make creatures that couldn’t sin. We call them cows. The fact is, you and I don’t want to be a cow. We want the right to choose. We want to be intelligent, sentient creatures who are capable of knowing God. And God wants us that way because then we can make the choice to love Him or not, as the case may be. But without the choice, there really is no love. Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil. That’s interesting. That’s what Satan said would happen. That’s what the old serpent said. He said, You will become as gods, knowing good and evil. And God said, He’s become as one of us. Now lest he put forth his hand and take the tree of life and eat and live forever, we’ve got to get him out of here. Because in his condition, we don’t want him to live forever. So God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. And he drove out the man and placed at the east of the Garden of Eden carabine and a flaming sword that turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. And so all of Adam and Eve’s children, including you and me, have been born outside of the garden, without access to the tree of life, and exposed continually to the choices that Adam and Eve left us with. We get to endure the good. We get to endure the bad. This, I suppose, is the idea of original sin. It’s not so much that we are guilty because of Adam and Eve’s sin. It’s just that the only option we have is to live life with the choices of good and bad, and the experiencing of good and bad, and learning from good and bad. So what have we learned from Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden? Well, we’ve learned that God has left us with the power to choose. No, no, he’s left us with the imperative to choose. We have to go down life’s road and make choices every day, and the choices we make turn us into winners or they turn us into losers. The people who listen to God, listen to His commandments, follow His instructions, have a guide to life and the choices of life, then turn them into winners. And the people who decide that they’re going to live life by experience I’ll try it if it works fine. If it doesn’t work, oh well. Well, I’m sorry. Those people are going to be losers. But there is a way back to the tree of life. There is a way whereby God is determined to turn losers into winners. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart reminding you,
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You were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44
