Which Window Are We Looking Out Of

God Made Them Both

Before anything else, settle this in your mind, because most of what people believe about that garden goes wrong right here. They were all pleasant to the sight.

Every tree in that garden, and the verse says so plainly. Every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for food, then it names two of them.

Both trees are named in that verse and both of them God made, and the same verse that calls them pleasant is the verse that names the forbidden one. Everything good comes from the Lord.

I have opened that garden already, in He Provides. He was put into a garden and he did not plant one. Today we are not looking at the garden. We are looking at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and at the end I will point you to the other one.

So the tree in and of itself was not bad. There was no poison in that fruit and no evil in that wood. God does not plant evil things in a garden He calls very good.

Hold that, because if the tree was not bad, then whatever went wrong did not come out of the tree. Now look at how God spoke about it.

He Named It by What It Was

He gave the man three things and no more.

He named the tree, and He named it by what it was, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He said do not eat of it, and He told him what would happen if he did.

That is the whole instruction. And in the command He gave Adam, He never told him where the tree was.

Verse 9 settles it. In the midst of the garden is in that verse, and it is said of the tree of life. Not the other one, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.

So the verse gives a place for one tree and not for the other. The tree of life is in the midst. The other is named and no place is given for it, and the command in verse 17 names it again and says nothing about where it stood. Now hear me carefully, because this one is disputed and I will not build on it. Men read that sentence more than one way, and translations differ, and some of them put both trees in the middle. I read in the midst as belonging to the one it is attached to. But that is a reading and not a proof, and nothing in this study is going to stand or fall on it.

He Came in Wide

Look at what he actually asked.

Hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

That is a wide question, and it is a wrong one. What he knew when he asked it, Genesis does not say. God had said the opposite, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.

He is not asking about a tree, and he does not name one. What is in his mouth is not what God said. Fishing is my word for it, and Genesis does not tell me what he was after.

He Turned the Warning Round

Now hear what he does with what God said.

God had said to Adam, in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The serpent takes that same sentence and turns it round, ye shall not surely die.

And then look at the next words, because they are the worst of it. For God doth know.

He is not only contradicting the warning now. He is telling her why God gave it. He is saying God knows something and is keeping it from you.

That is an accusation against God, and it is the oldest one there is. God is holding out on you, and God is not as good as He says.

And there is the window again, same God. She looked out of a different window and saw somebody keeping something back. Now this is the part I want you to catch.

And That Was Not in What God Told Him

Go back and read what God actually told the man, and He named the tree. He said do not eat of it, and He said thou shalt surely die. That is all of it.

God never said one word about eyes being opened. He never said anything about being as gods, or about knowing good and evil as something they would gain.

So the serpent is not correcting a warning. He is adding a promise to a command that never had one.

And that is my point about the command. What he was given did not include it. Whether they had anything else to weigh it against, the chapter does not tell me.

And Yes, It Came True, and That Is the Point

Some will tell you the serpent never lied that day. That he asked a question and told her something that turned out to be true. And they will point you to what God says afterward.

So it happened, their eyes were opened and they did come to know good and evil.

But notice when God says it, after, that is God looking at what they have done and naming it. The serpent said it before, and he held it out as a prize. The words matched, everything underneath them did not.

And there was one flat lie in the middle of it, with no question mark on it. Ye shall not surely die. Our Lord settles what he is.

He told her the outcome and he hid the cost. That is how the best lies are built, not out of nothing. Out of something true with the price torn off it.

And She Gave Him What He Did Not Have

Read her answer slowly, because there is more wrong in it than we were taught.

She starts well enough, and we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. Then it goes crooked.

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. She located it.

In the command God gave Adam, He named that tree and never said where it stood, and here she puts it in the midst of the garden.

Now let me say what I cannot tell you. I cannot tell you the serpent did not know where that tree was, because Genesis never says what he knew. I cannot tell you God was keeping it from him. And I cannot tell you she invented the place, because men read verse 9 more than one way and some take in the midst as covering both trees.

So I am leaving the location where it lies. What I can point at is undisputed, and it is enough. God said eat. She said touch. That word is not in the command anywhere. And put the dying in a row, because it moves through three mouths. God said, thou shalt surely die. She said, lest ye die. He said, ye shall not surely die. God put a surely in it. She left it out. And the serpent picked the surely back up and put a not in front of it.

That is the same sentence going through three mouths, and it does not come out the same. Neither shall ye touch it. God never said that.

And Then the Touch

Go back and read the command again, all of it, thou shalt not eat of it. There is nothing in there about touching, and nothing about coming near it, and nothing about staying away from that part of the garden. She added it.

And that is the one everybody preaches, and rightly, because adding to the word of God is a serious thing. But notice it is the second thing that went wrong in that sentence, not the first. An alarm should have gone off in her head, and in Adam’s.

The Alarm That Should Have Gone Off

The verse a little further down says she gave also unto her husband with her. With her, and that is as much as the verse gives me. Whether he stood there through the whole of that conversation, Genesis does not say. What it does say is that the command had been given to him directly, before she was ever made.

He was the one man on earth who could have said, that is not what He told me. Neither of them said a word.

They did not have the presence of mind to work it out. And here is what I make of that, and Genesis does not say it. Something had already got into them. The corruption did not begin at the fruit, and by the time that fruit was in her hand it had been going on for a while.

So What Does That Tell Us

Now somebody will ask the question I asked. He is still fallen, he is not bound yet and he is not cast into the fire yet. So how do we guard ourselves, if he is within earshot of what we say to God?

Let me tell you first what he is not, because fear grows in the gaps.

He is not God’s opposite. He is not everywhere and he does not know everything.

Going to and fro, walking up and down. That is a creature moving about, and it is not how Scripture ever speaks of God. What Job gives me is a thing that has to go somewhere. How far that goes, the verse does not lay out for me. And he cannot read you either.

Only. So the reading of hearts belongs to God and not to him. What Job shows me is a creature going to and fro who knew about a hedge, and I read that as watching. How much else he can do, Scripture does not lay out for me. Which raises a question I could not get past.

And How Did He Have It to Twist

That command was given to Adam, and it was spoken before the woman was ever made. So how did the serpent have it, well enough to turn it round in his mouth? Let me be honest with you, Scripture does not say.

We know he had it, because he used it. How he came by it is not written down anywhere, and I am not going to build a doctrine in a place where God left a silence.

What we do know is the kind of creature he is. Job shows us that he goes to and fro and walks up and down. It shows me he knew about a hedge. How he came to know it, Job does not say. And other places show he has access to accuse.

But none of that tells us how he learned a sentence spoken in a garden. Job shows you what he is, and it does not tell you how he got that verse.

And there is a simpler possibility sitting right there in the account, and God walked in that garden. That command was spoken out loud, nothing in the text says the serpent was out of hearing when it was.

I do not know. And where I do not know, I would rather tell you so than fill it in.

And Why Was He in There at All

That is the next question and it is the biggest one in the chapter, so let us not walk round it.

God made that garden. God planted it, God put the man in it, and God walked in it in the cool of the day. So what is that thing doing inside it?

And behind that question there is a harder one that somebody always asks quietly. Did God set them up? Let me say the guard first.

Cannot, so whatever else is true, that is not.

The garden itself is worth holding. God set two trees in it and He gave the man a command with a real no in it. And a command that cannot be broken is not a command, it is a fence. Obedience that had no other option available to it would not be obedience at all. It would just be the only thing there was.

He gave them a choice, and a choice has to have something on the other side of it or the word means nothing.

So He put the possibility in that garden, and He did not put the pull. The pull came from something else, and it came with a lie in its mouth. Now here is something that has never left me alone.

And There Is No Warning About Him on the Page

Go back and read the whole of what God told the man. Every word of it is in two verses. Name the tree, do not eat, thou shalt surely die. There is not one word about a serpent.

He was warned about a tree. There is nothing on the page warning him about an enemy.

And I do not know why, and I am not going to invent a reason. But I notice what happens next, because after this we are warned constantly.

We are not ignorant of his devices.

And Genesis records no warning to Adam about that creature at all. So we walk into our day with something the record never gives him, and that ought to change how we carry ourselves.

And What Was It Before

People will ask what that serpent was and where it came from, and here is the honest answer.

Genesis 3:1 tells us two things and no more. He was more subtil than any beast of the field, and the LORD God had made him. That is all Genesis says.

Some go to Isaiah and Ezekiel for the rest of the story, and good believers read those two passages more than one way, so I am not going to build a chapter on them here. What Scripture says plainly and without argument is who he turned out to be.

That old serpent. The last book of the Bible reaches back and names the one in the garden.

And Why Is He Still Loose

And this is where I started, so let me end it there. He is fallen, but he is not bound and he is not in the fire. Why not?

He is not loose because God cannot deal with him, the sentence is already written down.

That is not a hope. It is written in the past tense in a book we already have.

So he is under a sentence that has been passed and not yet carried out. Now Scripture does not stop and tell me why the carrying out has waited. What it does tell me is why God waits over the world at all, and the reason is not him.

Not willing that any should perish. That is Peter about God’s longsuffering toward men, and he is not writing about the devil’s sentence. But I read the two together, and what I take from it is this. Every day he is still walking about is another day somebody can be saved. He is not being tolerated. He is being outlasted.

The Guard Is Not Silence

And some will tell you the guard is to keep quiet. Do not say your prayers out loud, do not tell anybody your dream, in case the enemy is listening and takes it. That is fear, and I do not find it in the Bible.

Our Lord prayed out loud in front of crowds. He taught us to pray out loud. And when He sent us into the closet He gave the reason Himself.

Read what surrounds it and He is talking about praying to be seen of men. It was never about hiding from the devil. So what is the guard? Look at Eve again, because she is the whole answer.

She did not get the tree wrong. She got the words wrong. And Genesis gives that command to Adam before she was ever made, and never says how she came to know it.

And the command had been given to him, and there is no word from him anywhere in that conversation.

And I do not know what would have happened if she had known that command word for word, because that is not what the chapter gives me. What it gives me is what she said, and what he did with it.

And read the order again, because he bent it first. He came in with a wrong question before she said a word. He bent it first, and then she handed him her version, and he had more to work with than when he started.

That is the guard, not silence, accuracy. Know what God actually said, in the words He said it in, and know it well enough that you do not have to reach for it.

And He Is on a Leash

And here is the other half of it, and it is the half that lets you sleep.

Read Job again. In the same chapter where he is walking up and down and standing in the presence of God, look what he has to do before he can touch anything.

He asked, and God set the limit, and he could not cross it. And Job says it plainly at the end of the whole business.

So the enemy is on a leash in the very chapter where he has the most access. He can go to and fro, and He can watch, and He can accuse. He can go no further than he is let. He may well be within earshot.

He Cannot Stop Anything

And there is one more thing to settle, because it is the reason we do not have to be afraid of his listening. He cannot overturn what God has purposed.

Who shall turn it back. That is asked as a question and there is no answer to it, and that is the point of asking it that way.

So he may hear your prayer, and he cannot cancel it. He may know what God has said over your life, and he cannot disannul it. Now do not hear me saying he can do nothing at all, because Paul says otherwise.

Hindered. So he can get in the way of a man. What he cannot do is turn back what God has purposed, and those are two different things.

But He Will Take Ground You Hand Him

And the other side of it is that he can be given room, and Paul says so.

Give place. That is ground conceded, and Paul would not warn us about it if it were not possible.

And look at what he is talking about when he says it, anger held overnight. Something we do, and go on doing, and then leave lying there, that is the place being given.

And Eve is the example again, and He did not take that garden from her. She handed him a sentence he could work with, and he worked with it.

But Not Every Loss Has Anything to Do With Me

Now hear the other half, because this is where people get wounded, and I want to say it plainly. Not every loss has anything to do with me.

Giving place is real, and Paul names it. But somebody will take that and turn it round backwards, and read every hard thing that ever happened to them as proof that they handed something over. Look at Job, and hear who is saying it.

God Himself, and He says it again in chapter two. Job conceded nothing, and Scripture never once says he gave place. And he lost his children, his substance and his health in a single stretch.

If loss means I let him in, then Job has to be blamed for his own children, and that is not true and it is not kind. So hold the two apart and do not let them run together.

Giving place is about what I hand over. Job is about what he was handed.

He cannot overturn what God has purposed. And where he does get room, Paul says it is room that was given. But Job was touched without giving any, so do not read every hard thing as ground you handed over.

The Words Went Crooked Before the Fruit Did

This is the thing I want you to carry out of this study.

We were taught that the fall was the bite. The eating is where we start counting, but look at the order of what happened in that garden.

The serpent spoke crooked, and she answered crooked. She added a word God never said, and she dropped one He did say.

All of that came out of her mouth before anything went into it.

The door came wide open with the first one, and after that the second and the third were child’s play. Once you have accepted something crooked, the next crooked thing does not even feel like a step.

Damage is damage, there is no pill for a slip of the tongue. So the words had already gone crooked before she ever ate.

Paul is not writing about Eden there, and I am the one carrying it back. But that is what I see. Not their standing first, and not their innocence first. Their communication. The line between them and God went crooked before their feet did.

Nothing Changed About the Tree

Now read what she saw, and hold it against verse 9.

She saw that it was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes.

That is exactly what God said about every tree in that garden. Pleasant to the sight, and good for food. She is describing it in God’s own words.

So nothing changed about the tree. Same ground, same fruit, and God Himself had called it pleasant. Which window are we looking out of will determine what we see.

Same garden, same trees. She looked out of a different window, and now the tree is a tree to be desired to make one wise, and that phrase is not in verse 9 anywhere. That part she brought with her.

Pleasant. The King James uses the same English word in both places, and the lexicons give two different Hebrew words underneath, so let me not make a word study out of a translator’s choice. What I hear is the same pull, and now it is being used to sell her something.

Sweet first, gravel after.

Why Can We Not Just Pass By

And here is a question I have carried a long time, and I have never had a clean answer for it. Human nature is a mother.

You have two things standing in front of you. One says yes and one says no, why is it that we cannot just pass by and not buy?

That is not only a garden, every one of us has done it this week over something small. There was a thing we did not want at all until somebody told us we could not have it, and then we wanted it. The no is what put it in the window.

And Paul says the same thing about himself, and he could not account for it either.

Taking occasion by the commandment, the commandment did not create the wanting. It gave the wanting something to push against. And a few verses on he says this.

That is an apostle saying he does not understand himself.

So do not read that garden as though those two were a special case of foolishness. That is the first time the Bible records it happening. It was not the last, and you and I have both stood in front of a yes and a no this week and gone straight for the no.

Not Every Good Thing Is Good for You

And here is the lesson underneath all of it, and it did not stop in that garden. Not everything good do we need to have.

Take meat, what is wrong with meat? Nothing at all, and it provides protein and zinc and everything else a body needs for nourishment. There is no sin in a piece of meat.

But God had put His people in a wilderness and He was feeding them with manna, every morning, without fail. And they yearned for what they had eaten back in Egypt.

So the question was never whether meat was good. The question was whether that meat was what God wanted for them. And He gave it to them.

And it should stop you. He gave them exactly what they asked for, and the getting is what cost them. And read what Numbers says.

A good thing, given, and it became a snare to them. Take another one, and this time not a thing but a condition.

And the Same Again at the Tower

Noah’s descendants came together on a plain and they were of one language and one speech, and they said, let us build.

Now what is wrong with unity? Nothing. And hear what God says over that particular crowd.

That is God’s own assessment of what was happening among them, nothing will be restrained from them.

So the unity was not the problem, the unity was in disobeying Him. They had been told to fill the earth, and here is where.

Replenish the earth. Now hear what they said on that plain.

Lest we be scattered. They said it themselves. Filling the earth was the thing He had told them to do, and they built a tower to keep from doing it. And read how it ended.

The very thing they built to avoid. Good thing, wrong direction. Look at the three of them side by side.

So There Is a Pattern Here

A tree that God made and called pleasant, meat that nourishes a body. Unity, and God Himself said nothing they imagined would be restrained from them.

Not one of them is evil, every one of them is good, and every one of them came from Him.

And in each case the same thing went wrong. It was not what He wanted for those people at that time. Two of them reached out and took. The third asked for it and God gave it to them, and the getting is what cost them. Not every good thing is good for you.

He shall direct thy paths, that is the answer to the whole of it. Not a rule about what is good and what is bad, because the tree was good and the meat was good and the unity was good. What we need is direction, and He gives it.

And be careful how you read that one, because it is not a promise that He hands you whatever you are wanting.

Delight thyself in Him first, and that is the order the verse gives. And here is what I take from that order, and the psalm does not spell it out. A heart delighting in Him is a heart wanting what He wants, and those are the desires you can safely have.

Eve had a desire that God had not placed in her. It came to her from somewhere else, and she took it, and it was a good tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And Once You Know, You Cannot Unknow

We make that sound mysterious and it is not. Genesis says they came to know good and evil, and it does not explain that tree any further than that. Here is what I make of it. Once a person comes to know something, you can never unknow it.

That is what I see happening to them, not a magic fruit and not a spell. A door opened that does not close again. They knew something after that eating which they had not known before it, and there was no going back to not knowing it.

That is why nothing was ever the same. Not because God was harsh, but because knowing does not reverse.

And Now the Other Tree

We have not said much about the tree of life, and here it is at the end.

Read that verse and see what it tells you. Lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life.

Also, that word settles something, also means in addition to the one he had already taken. So he had not taken this one. All that time it stood in the midst of the garden, and it was never forbidden him, and there is no record that he ever ate from it.

And Genesis records no guard on it before this, no sword and no cherubim. The guard went up after the sin, not before. So the crack appeared, and God moved.

And look at why He moved, lest he eat, and live for ever.

That is not anger, read it again. Genesis gives one reason and one only, lest he eat and live for ever. A man carrying sin was kept from a tree that would have made him live for ever, and Genesis does not tell me what that life would have been like, or what could or could not have been done for a man in it.

And here is what I take from it, and it is mine. He was not protecting the tree from the man. He was protecting the man from the tree. The flaming sword was a kindness. And then look what happened to the man He kept from it.

And he died. That is how it ends. Then the numbers come down over the generations, not evenly and not in a straight line, until Moses writes it down as it now stands.

Death was never God’s plan for man. But once the crack was there, death came, just as God had warned.

And Then Came the Coats of Skins

And look what He did before they were ever out of that garden.

They had covered themselves already, and here is what with.

Aprons of fig leaves, made by their own hands. Then God made them coats of skins and clothed them. Genesis does not say He took the leaves off, and it does not need to.

Now Genesis does not report a death, and it does not name a creature. But skins come off something, so I take it that something died for those coats, and that what He made cost a life.

And Genesis does not call it a sacrifice and does not say it was for sin. What it says is coats of skins, and clothed them. So when I set it beside the lamb at the passover and the blood on the doorposts and the sacrifice morning and evening, I am the one setting it there.

See the Bigger Picture

Now stand back from all of it and look at what God was doing.

And all three of these are how I read it. He barred the tree, and they did die, just as He had warned.

He covered them with skins, so that they were not left naked in it. And then He sent His Son.

And here is my picture, because only one of them was standing in that garden. There were two ways to live for ever. One was to be taken, and one would be given.

And that last one is mine as well, and it is the whole of what I see. He barred the wrong one so the right one could come.

And that is how I read the mercy and the purpose of God in this account, working together.

And What About Us Who Embellish

Now let me bring this home, and I have to put myself in it.

Eve added to what God said, neither shall ye touch it, and He never said it.

I have walked her steps out already, in Beware of Covetousness, how she saw and desired and took and did eat and gave. So I will not go over that ground again this morning.

And notice which way she added, and she did not loosen His word. She made it tighter. God said do not eat, and she said do not eat and do not touch.

That is how most of us do it too. We do not usually go about weakening what God said. We add. We put rules round it that He never gave and we call that holiness, and we pass it on to somebody else as though it came from Him.

And here is why it costs so much. The added part is the part that can be disproved. Nothing in Genesis says what would have happened if she had touched it, and that is the point. The added part is the part that can be put to the test. So the rule that was never His falls first, and it takes the real one down with it, and now the person is standing there thinking God’s word failed them when it was never God’s word that broke.

Lest thou be found a liar. That is a hard sentence and it is not written to Eve, because she never had a page in front of her. Genesis does not say how she had that command, only that she had some form of it. It is written to people like us, who have it in writing and can go and check it and do not. So we have less excuse than she had.

And some of us have done worse than adding a rule. We have taken the word of God and packaged it around what we already wanted, and wrapped the whole thing in enough truth that nobody could tell where it stopped being His.

It will. And Genesis has God coming in the cool of the day, and the chapter does not tell me how long after the eating that was. And this is where I want to leave you.

And He Came Looking Anyway

They hid, and they had every reason to. And He came walking in that garden, and He called out to the man. Genesis records that walk and does not tell me about any before it, so when I say He came the way He always came, that is my reading and not the verse. Where art thou. He knew where they were. He was not searching, He was calling.

Now most of us have been taught that it was love that came looking, or mercy, or grace, and I will not stand here and say it was not. But there is more standing in that garden than we have been told, and I am contending for it in Even the Wayside Seed, because of my own life and the way He did it with me. We will come to that.

For this morning it is enough to say this. He did not wait for them to come out of the trees. He came in.

And before they were out of that garden He made them coats of skins and covered them. Genesis says skins and does not tell me whose hand took the animal, so I will not put that in His.

So if you are holding a crooked word this morning, one you bent yourself, or one you added to, or one you dressed up and passed on as His, do not do what they did and go further into the trees. He is already walking, and He is already calling.

The Way Is Guarded, Not Closed

And read the last words of that chapter. To keep the way of the tree of life. Not to destroy the way. To keep it.

Now keep there is a guarding word, and in that chapter the guard was to shut Adam out, so I am not telling you a door was left open for him. What I am saying is that the way itself was not destroyed. And the last book of the Bible tells you who eats of it.

In the midst. That is the same English wording the King James gives in Genesis 2:9, and one is Hebrew and one is Greek, so let me not build a word study on a translator’s choice again. What John gives me is a tree of life in the paradise of God, and a promise to him that overcometh.

The tree they never ate from is in the paradise of God, and it is still His to give.