lost and found

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. (Genesis 3:23-24)

Have you ever lost anything that was so great and it was all your fault?

Maybe you were careless with that fifty dollar bill and it blew out of your hand. You knew the danger of taking too much of a kind of medication and you knew its effect on your liver but you took too much anyway. You neglected your wife and came home one day to find her gone. You goofed around so much that you got kicked out of school. You were not paying attention and wrecked your new car. You didn’t watch the heat and burned the $20 steaks.

And it was all your own fault, and you cannot get it back, no matter how hard you want it.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Perfect situation, no problems, no hunger, no real work, no clothing bills – it was, all in all, a perfect place.

But like almost anyone in any perfect situation, they had to go and screw it up. And in many ways it was her fault. She was the one the serpent addressed.

God told Adam and Eve that they could eat any of the fruit in the Garden, except for one tree: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were happy in their home. But there was, of course, that one little nagging problem. That silly tree. It could be that they had stood and looked at it on several occasions, wondering about it.

Finally one day, while they are looking, the serpent speaks and asks why they weren’t eating that particular tree’s fault. Eve said, God said not to or we would die. The serpent corrected her and told her that God was afraid they would be like him so he denied access to the tree.

Then he gives the fruit, not to Adam, who probably would have refused, but to Eve. She eats it, and then hands it Adam. He could refuse the devil, but he had trouble refusing his wife. So he ate it too, the wimp.

And they lost paradise.

I would imagine that there were many times – probably more than once a day – that they looked back over paradise and wished they could have do-overs.

But they could not. Humanity had finally, irrevocably, absolutely lost the greatest thing they had: their unlimited relationship with God.

Of course, they would not be lost forever. In Luke 19:10, Jesus said, of his mission, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. He came to bring us back.

His sacrifice in giving up his perfect life gave us our lives back. And even though we live in a lot of bad situations and problems now, we are sinless in God’s sight. We are perfect again.

As Jesus said Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). He was not laughing at our inability to do anything right. He was commenting on the fact that we can, through him and the grace of God, be perfect.

That which was lost in sin is found in Jesus and his grace.