Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 93. Eve’s Apple and God’s Question (I fell with her—separated from my Creator)

Hello human.

I can’t get that apple out of my mind lately. Eve’s apple. The one she plucked from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

As I think about what it means to be a believer, what we align with… I do so knowing that I am turning my sail into a headwind, navigating beyond the “settled in” believer. That I am traveling further into my own open water to gain wisdom about how to connect to, provide a BUOY to humans who think about God, who can smell the salty sea air, but haven’t left the sand.

That I want to witness to humans who have bookmarked God for any time beyond this given moment. Bookmarked learning more about God, and a relationship with Him for a time in the future that is more convenient, that brings more experience with life to the spiritual conversation. Bookmarked God because the longing is there and recognized.

Humans who have created the kind of bookmark that believes that God is not unlike an apple. When plucked too soon, is too tart, that prematurely rushing the relationship robs it of its sweetness.

But to claim being part of The Fall, when Eve, and Adam fell away from their Creator, to claim that, is the original reason we create distant between us and God.

When we bookmark something, we give it value, but we also give it a time and place other than the moment we are in. Most of the time it is just in the future.

Bookmarks make us feel better about not taking immediate action. Bookmarks gives us a sense of relief, comfort and redemption. And it is next to impossible to not let our age be a driving factor. The younger we are, the longer time we believe we have to return to any bookmark.

While I know that ultimately someone turning to God, and His beloved Son, is about personal conviction, I do know that there are conversations that appeal to our mental faculties that season, that let the heart marinate in the spiritual power of God’s sovereignty, and His foreknowledge of our part in His story.

Humans and The Fall

Genesis 3:1-9, the first nine verses are about The Fall. And how this one action set an eternal paradigm for how sin works in everything we do as humans separated from our Creator. I care a lot about the origin, the genesis of things.

Let’s read it first:

 Genesis 3: 1-9

The Fall

 

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

 

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

 

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

 

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

What Happened First?

1. The serpent triggered confusion and planted a lie in the heart of a human.

“You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

Confusing Eve, confusing us about what God actually says to each of us? And blowing it up into falsehood, a whole bunch of “any” to make God impossible to follow.

2. The serpent planted doubt about the consequence.

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The serpent defies the consequence with doubt. This encourages Eve to weigh the value of consequences God has laid before us, to challenge His authority, His divinity, His sovereignty.

3. The serpent suggested the power of being like God. Of being her own god.

The serpent introduces an opposing consequence, that Eve would become “like God.” Confusion on display at its best, which became the turning point to her believing the serpent. That she should make her own decision about that tree, that fruit. She started by choosing herself.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

4. Eve, then Adam experienced shame and guilt for the first time. Separation from God.

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

They were ashamed that they were naked. For me this means they realized God’s omniscience. It was the reason that they now listened for God’s steps, with the heaviness of a guilted heart.

So they hid.

5. The first time God displayed confronting human motive, because they had separated from His intent.

9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

God went on in verses 10-24 to layout the consequences of the fall. Adam and Eve’s fall from His glory, the beginning of humanity’s fall from His glory.

And in verse 22, God proclaims that Adam, must leave the Garden of Eden.

22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

Genesis chapter 4 is the beginning of Adam’s lineage, the lineage of humanity. That lineage leads to each of us. And while Adam could no longer eat of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden—he could no longer live forever—Adam lived 930 years.  That’s a lot of years of spiritual and earthly consequence, working the ground because of one choice, one apple. One original fall away from his Creator. But his Creator did not leave them. They were part of His Story.

Another Word for Being Separated From Your Creator?

What is another word for being separated from your Creator? Because that is what Eve, then Adam did. They made a decision that separated them from their Creator.

This is caused by sin. Sin is not a popular word in today’s culture. It has been seen as self-hater language, opposite of the self-praise culture we live in. It is deemed archaic, mythological. Something in a people’s long ago Biblical past.

But not for me. Because we were never meant to be alone. We were not created for independence. We were created to be in a relationship with our Creator.

And He did the most beautiful, divine thing by giving us our free will. The choice to listen to Him, and not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (that tree needs a shorter title, human).

Choices shape our spiritual journey.

What happened in the Garden is part of the DNA of what happens in our lives. We are part of The Fall. The process we go through with choices, with decisions we make that either turn toward our spiritual destiny or away from it. It’s a solid path to gain wisdom through the footsteps of Eve:

1. Confusion is not from God. He is clear and exacting. Read His Word.
2. Expanding the truth into a lie. From “one tree” to “any tree” God speaks truth, no more, no less.
3. Consequences from God are just. And there are earthly consequences we must bear for our actions.
4. Choices that separate us from God, bring shame, guilt, fear, worry, anxiety, and all the other symptoms that require medication, spiritual and physical.
5. When God asks “Where are you?” it is for us to answer. He already knows our intent.

So, my witness is built on what happened in that Garden. I accept my place in humanity, and how God is bringing His story forward.

In my life today, I accept that when I stand in front of the tree that makes me my own god, I need to do this:

Pray for clarity.

Seek God’s truth.

Seek spiritual consequences that are eternal.

Loop this question throughout my day: “Does this action separate me or bring me closer to God?”

Answer the Lord’s question “Where are you?” with my witness.

Beyond That Apple

And the rest of God’s story follows from that apple. But it didn’t start there, nor will it end there. It didn’t start with humanity. Look at John 1:1-3.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

The Word was God, And when the word became flesh, His beloved Son came to sacrifice His divine nature so He could restore the relationship God intended to have with Adam and Eve in the Garden.

God was before and God is after.

How we each come to our personal threshold for conviction of the heart is God’s work. But bookmarking God is a spiritual stall that comes from our earthly pursuits as humans, and our actions, like avoiding spiritual concepts that this world doesn’t embrace. Condemns. They seem outdated. They seem like a lie with no consequences.

Sin is One of “Those” Words

Sin is one of those words. Yet the Creator, the tree, the apple, the serpent, the first man, the first woman shows us, human, that it is about separation from God’s divine intent.

Isaiah 59:2

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Yet, as Apostle Paul assures us, and this is so major to me, divine rebuttal of the serpent, the divine consequence for the first man and woman, the divine restitution of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is realized through the life of 33 earthly years, the death by cruxification, and the resurrection by God, the Father, of His Son, Jesus Christ. I leave this BUOY giving someone you may know human, a reason to stop bookmarking God and get to know His Son.  

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.