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@ Josh
2024-10-08 15:57:15God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And God took a rib from Adam’s side and made woman, as a helper fit for him. They had every tree bearing fruit for food; they had no quarrel with God or with one another. It was a garden paradise. And Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. They were to have dominion over all creation and live as kings and queens on the earth, under God the high king over all. God gave Adam only one prohibition: of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Adam was God’s son. Adam was to be a priest and serve and guard that Garden Temple that God planted for him. Adam was to rule as king over the earth and subdue it with righteous rule. Adam was to be a prophet and instruct his wife and all his posterity about God’s righteous rules and keep them from sin. If Adam obeyed God, He would live, and all His children to come along with him. But if he disobeyed, he would die, and all his children to come along with him.
Where was Adam the prophet, the priest, the king, at that pivotal moment when that serpent slid into the garden and stole God’s throne in that garden temple? Where was Adam when the bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, his bride Eve, formed from his own rib, was deceived by the serpent? Paul writes in 1 Tim. 2:14 that Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. As priest Adam was to care for those under his watch and guard that garden from evil, as prophet he was to spread and uphold God’s word, as king he was to subdue every rebel force that threatened God’s rule. Adam should have killed the dragon and saved the girl. Instead he stood by as the serpent deceived Eve, and then he chose to sin along with her. Adam failed miserably. He broke the law. He desecrated God’s temple. He gave dominion over the world to Satan. He deserved to die. He was supposed to die. God said, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Gen. 2:17) So why didn’t he?
The answer is in God’s promise in Gen. 3:15. Theologians through the centuries have called this the "first gospel." In it, God promises that a male offspring of Eve would bruise the head of the serpent, that head of all evil. Gen. 3:15 says to the serpent of this Son of Eve, “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” The story of the Bible doesn’t end in Genesis 3 because God wants to show to all the universe how He can be both just and at the same time justify the unjust. God’s plan in the history of the world, through all its convulsions, is to show Himself great in His justice to pay back every sin, and at the same time in great in His mercy to pardon sin.