Your Father's Heart (Part 1)—Gen 1-3

Many of us have grown up Biblically believing that since the story is all about God, then we don't matter. The enemy deepens the wound by telling us that God doesn't care, and good, but mistaken, church teachers convince us that our hearts remain wicked and deceitful. Even after God moves in. Imagine. (If God lives in our hearts, what does it say about them? Can God live in a wicked, dark, place?) So let's take a look at God's heart towards us in two parts, the first in Genesis, the second in a story you've memorized you've heard it so many times. But we'll twist it a bit to see it more clearly.

In Gen 1:26-28: "Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness". . .

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them." (ESV)

Allow that to sink in a moment. We've read it and heard it so often that it just flows right out of us without landing in us.  We were made in His image. Now, describe God. Go ahead, you have 100,000 words. Will it be enough? For me, to keep it simple, can we call His image Glory? He is glorious, and we're made to be glorious as well. 2 Cor. 3:18 says that we're indeed being transformed day by day back into that glorious image. (Paraphrased) So we start out in His image, and we're being transformed back into it by His work now, even before we get to Heaven.

Now, what happens next? Gen. 2:8-15: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.  And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 

Now, let me ask you, "Does it sound like God is holding out on us in any way?" Or does it sound more like He's pouring it ALL in? It truly is lush, a paradise, and He puts Adam in it. Your Father is NOT holding out. And if in some way it did seem like He was, in the next few verses He gives Adam the freedom to eat whatever he wants except for one tree, and then proceeds to make a woman for him! Adam and God play 'create and name' with the animals. God is there. It is intimate, it is paradise.

But the story takes the bad turn, which we know too well—sin. And from then on, we stand guilty, condemned. Adam sums it well in 3:10: "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” And we've been afraid, ashamed, and hiding ever since. But how does God react? Does He come in anger? Does He slay His own creations? Does He condemn? He condemns the serpent. And He does curse the ground (not Adam!) and takes some of the joy from childbirth (yet does NOT curse Eve). But how does God really feel?

Gen 3:21-24: And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Doesn't this sound more protective and caring than condemning? When your young child ruins something, and is injured, what do you do? You care for them, you try and fix the wounds, you cover them, and you make a new rule: Thou shalt not do whatever you just did! Which is what God does. He covers them with the skin of one of His creation, and then protects them by removing them far from the other tree, the Tree of Life, because even God could not suffer the consequence of their eating from that now. What was the Tree of Life? The other tree. One that they could eat from. And had they eaten from it first, we would have been eternally glorified and clean. But after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and now being sin-stained, eating from the Tree of Life would mean eternal condemnation in the fallen state. Unthinkable! So just as you might sell the house next to the interstate after your child wandered near it, God closed off the garden so that no man would return, until Revelation 22:2 where it reappears.

Again, what is your Father's heart toward you? Do you see it differently now? On to Part 2.