Banished...

The end of Genesis 3:

The beginning of the end:

 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.”  So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. 

Man ruined the bliss of the garden, the innocence and purity of obedience of their Maker, and the beauty and wonder of His hand.  Instead, man used his hand to raise it against God, and therefore God sent him out – away to work – and kept him from his presence.

God is holy.  It’s who he is.  He’s not mean.  He is good.

From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, the path to redemption was laid.  And that path is not one we can travel by good works or sewing together fig leaves.  It’s a path that Jesus had to take from heaven, to lay down his life for us all, so that we can be restored to the garden of bliss.

And it’s not because God is mean.  It’s because God is holy, and therefore we must be holy to be in his presence.  Only we can’t, so Jesus did, so that we then can.

What a powerful beginning of The Book – where we read of creation and were in awe and wonder at the power of God.  Then we read of the first sin and the first fall, and fell in love with the amazing love of God.