I once sat in a booth at Chili’s talking to a friend about Genesis 3. He was convinced it was a scam: “How can God punish Adam and Eve for eating from the Tree of Knowledge? Doesn’t everyone want knowledge?” He said God was unfair. I was at a loss, and we went round and round for hours. But look at the indictment against Eve:
“Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable to make one wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” Genesis 3:6.
Eve’s failures are our failures. She wanted the fruit because it satisfied the lust of the flesh (“was good for food”), the lust of the eyes (“was delightful to look at”), and her pride (“was desirable to make one wise”). Each of our sins fits into one of these categories.
God is God. If He placed some knowledge off-limits, that is His right.
And He did: there are things we do not need to know, others we are not ALLOWED to know. There are books you should NOT read, movies you should NOT watch, pictures you should NOT look at, places you should NOT go. Why? Because those things will HARM you. To protect you, God placed them off-limits.
The next sin is Cain killing Abel. Result? Cain, a farmer, is told “if you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield” 4:12. Cain’s sin robbed him of his life’s work. That is serious. Adam and Eve stole God’s knowledge and lost their home in paradise. Cain gained knowledge of murder and lost his life’s work.
God, teach us to submit to you. Help us understand that you have placed things off-limits not to deprive us, but to protect us! Help us obey your rules. Help us WORK to gain good knowledge but help us NOT to seek forbidden knowledge. Help us trust you and respect boundaries.
ΑΩ
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