Love does not envy.
God created man and women. He prepared the perfect home for them. They spent their days in a garden filled with life. Lush grasses carpeted the ground. Canopies of trees spread above providing a shelter from the sun. Sweet fruit, berries and grains grew every where to feed the two.
In the evening, God came into the garden and walked with the couple. He spent time with them. They walked with God in a close relationship.
This is what our lives are suppose to be like. Jesus gave two commands. He said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. When we abide in His love we are suddenly capable of keeping the second commandment to love others as ourself; to love as Christ loved us.
The serpent entered the garden. i won’t go into my whole study of the serpent, but I will mention that the word that is interpreted serpent comes from a root word which is whisper like the snake charmers. This serpent, our accuser, Satan seeks out Eve and tells her half truths and lies.
But look at Eve for a moment.
Genesis 3:3 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which theLord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
Please be patient with me while I paraphrase the conversation.
God says do not eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or you will die. You can have everything else. After debating back and forth between Eve and Satan about just what God said, Satan tells her that God is keeping something great from her. God just doesn’t want Eve to be all knowing like God. God doesn’t want Eve to have everything.
So Eve looks at the fruit. It looks good to eat and Eve wants to know everything just like God.
And there we have it. The cause of the first sin is envy.
That evening, God comes into the garden to walk with Adam and Eve. They run and hide from HIm. The close relationship has been broken. God finds them, cloths them and then sets them out of the garden. The envy of desiring what belongs to God, the envy of not being satisfied and content with who God made them resulted in sin. The sin broke the relationship.
Jesus, our savior, mends that broken relationship. He is one with God and invites us to be one with Him. He mends the breach. But we must accept that what is God’s is God’s. We are not all knowing and all powerful. We must accept that at times we will not understand. What seems good to us maybe really bad for us. Either God is Lord of our lives or we are Lord of our lives.
When we allow God to be God and do not try to replace Him with ourselves, we can once again walk with him in the cool of the evening.
When we are one with Christ, we can start to love others by allowing him to love through us.
Fourth Day Adventures 