- RAMBLINGS IN GENESIS
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Fifth Ramble - SABBATH PROFANED
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- (Genesis 3:1-9)
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- Although God rested, and His created
universe rested, evil did not rest. The subtle serpent
was snaking his way through God's garden, seeking his own
kind of prey. Coming upon the human couple, who were
selecting their morning breakfast, he sidled up to them,
and addressed the woman:
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- "Was
it really the Omnipotent One," he insinuated, "who was
telling you not to eat from all trees in this orchard?"
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- And
the woman dutifully quoted the prohibition first given to
Adam, but she also added, "neither shall ye touch it."
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- While himself indolently leaning against "the tree," the snake seemingly ignored the woman's addition, but offered his own lie. But it was a lie mingled with truth, which is the worst kind of deception. He denied death (the lie); but he promised knowledge and power. (Compare Genesis 3:5 with 3:22).
- No
wonder the poor woman, innocent, unsophisticated, and
inexperienced, was deceived.
- The
serpent had suggested that it was not God, but Adam who
had told her not to eat (suggestion of male chauvinism,
and invitation to a "battle of the sexes"). And then to
be told that the information given her was incorrect! As
the scripture says:
- "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being ("greatly," in Greek) deceived" (I Timothy 2:14).
- Yes,
the woman had an excuse, but it did not exonerate her.
But as for Adam, he had no excuse.
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- Adam's fault was two-fold. He knew better. He
had received the instruction direct from God.
- First, it was his duty to stop the woman,
for he was
- "with her." (Gen. 3:6).
- Second, he accepted Eve's leadership,
receiving from her the forbidden fruit and eating.
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- And
the serpent had struck his fangs, not just at the man and
woman, but at the very Omnipotent One who had created
them. To him, God was the enemy, and the human beings
were merely the pawns in his strategy of rebellion.
- The serpent was thinking that he was putting God on the horns of a dilemma. Either God must that very Sabbath day kill off the crown of His creation - which creation God himself had pronounced "very good;" or He must go back on His own word.
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- Wherein lay the serpent's misjudgment? It is seen in the fact that he referred to God as "Elohim," (The Most Mighty One.) He knew God not as Yahweh, the Living One, the One who loves His creation. Satan knows not the meaning of love. For him it is simply "Power." (He is "the god of forces" - Daniel 11:38).
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- How
the Sabbath was being profaned, that day!
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- The
remainder of the day was no sabbath for the human beings.
Aware of their own nakedness, they spent the rest of the
daylight hours in devising a cover-up. They had to use
fig-leaves; what did they have for thread?
- It
was a long day, filled with worry, fear, guilt, possibly
mutual recrimination, and scurrying about for materials,
the pressing and sewing leaves together (perhaps with
grape-vines.) Then, fearful that the leaves would tear,
they searched for places to hide.
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- Finally at dusk, when the Sabbath at sunset ended, "in the cool of the day," God Himself arose from His sabbath, and came forth to seek them.
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- "Adam, where art thou?"
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- ---
Norman L. MacLeod Jr.
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