Adam & Eve : Blaming Others

One day, Eve was walking with Adam in the garden of Eden and suddenly, a snake spoke to her from a tree branch waaaayy up high.

“You talk to God, don’t you?” he asked Eve.

“I do!” Eve answered with a smile. “He talks with Adam and me every day. It is so wonderful!”

“Well, I have a question,” said the snake, crawling down closer to her. (But the snake didn’t really have a question. Satan was hiding in the snake and was hoping to trick Eve into listening to him). “Did God rreeeaaalllly say that you can’t eat any of this delicious fruit from all these trees?”

“That is not what He said,” Eve quickly corrected the snake. The snake came down even closer as Eve continued. “God said that we can eat from all the trees, except ONE — the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is in the middle of the garden. We can eat from any tree but that one. He said not to eat from it or touch it, or we will die!” And she shuddered at the thought.

The snake acted surprised. “You won’t die! God told you that because that fruit is special. If you eat it, you’ll know the difference between right and wrong, just like God.”

“I didn’t know that!” Eve thought. “Why didn’t God tell us? I want to be able to tell right from wrong, too, just like God!”

The snake could see that his trick was working, so he continued. “God is trying to cheat you. He is trying to keep you from eating it and becoming wise like Him.”

Eve walked over to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and looked closely at the fruit. It was beautiful, and it looked so delicious.

“I want to be someone who knows everything, too,” Eve thought. “I don’t want to have to depend on God for everything. I want to know things for myself.” So she picked some fruit, and she ate some. Then she gave some to Adam, and he ate it, too.

Just then something surprising happened. All of a sudden they realized that they had not been wearing clothes, and they were ashamed. (Up to this point God had not taught Adam and Eve anything about wearing clothes.)

Then they heard footsteps. Step, step, step. God was taking a walk in the garden of Eden.

“Quick! Hide! We don’t have any clothes!” Adam whispered to Eve, and they tried to hide from God.

But God called to Adam, “Adam, where are you?”

Adam answered, “I heard you moving around in the garden, and I was afraid because I didn’t have any clothes, so I hid.”

And then God said with an all-knowing frown, “Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

You would think that things could not be any worse, but Adam and Eve did make it worse. Instead of just saying it was all their fault that they chose to disobey God, Adam and Eve tried to answer God in a way where maybe they wouldn’t look so bad. So they blamed, blamed, blamed.

Adam answered, “The woman You gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree… and I ate it.”

Then God asked the woman, “What have you done?”

Then the woman tried to blame the snake, “The serpent tricked me… so I ate it.”

So Adam blamed the woman and God for giving him the woman, and then the woman blamed the snake. The snake is the only one who didn’t blame anyone because the devil was hiding in the snake, and the devil was just glad he had won in making the man and woman disobey God.

What a sad, sad day. I don’t like days where satan smiles and God frowns.

And as you probably know, God could not let this disobedience go unpunished.

To the snake God said, “You are going to have to crawl on your belly from now on (the snake had legs before that). And, the woman’s children and you are always going to be fighting. Her Child and her children will crush your head, while you will only bruise their heel.”

Then God turned to Eve. “Eve, because you disobeyed Me, I will make it hurt for you to have babies. And you will always want to be the boss over your husband, but you cannot ever be his boss, Eve.”

Then to Adam God said, “Adam, before now the ground has always just given you good food. But from now on you’re going to have to work, work, work to get the ground to give you enough good food to eat.”

Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit because they wanted to know things and be important instead of depending totally on God. But that only made them very unhappy. God had known this would make them unhappy. That was WHY He told them not to eat that fruit in the first place. He knew that the best way to live, was to walk with Him, totally dependent on Him.

Adam and Eve had blown it! They messed up God’s Plan to make people into a Bride for His Son. They had broken the first Covenant, the first Agreement with God. And because they had sinned, God had to make them go out of His beautiful garden. He even put angels to block the way to the Garden and to the Tree of Life.

Now God was going to have to come up with another plan. (But don’t worry. God will make a way back to the Tree and to the Garden of Eden and to HIM… but we’ll tell you more about that later.)