War In Your Heart # 27

Defeat Through the First Man in Eden (continued)

Consequences of Defeat (continued)

Disorder Between Themselves

The man's answer to God's question when on trial evidences the beginning of friction between husband and wife - the beginning of friction in home life which has reached such devastating proportions today. "The woman ... she gave me." Even if she did, couldn't he have refused? Why didn't he frankly say, "I did eat, and in so doing I disobeyed the command Thou gavest to me. The blame is wholly mine"?

There is also ample ground for the frightful disorder in family life through divorce and the insubordination of children to the punishment upon Eve - the suffering in childbearing and the subjection to her husband. Remember they were now sinners, each ruled by self-love and self-will. How could there be prevention of friction? The happy fellowship and mutual submission enjoyed when they lived within the circle of God's will and purely for His glory had gone into reverse. Each ate of the tree by his own choice, however the temptation came. Yet each by inference put the blame upon another. Matthew Henry quaintly says: "Sin is a brat no one is willing to own." The tragic and terrifying outcome of Adam and Eve's sin in their own home will be seen in the next chapter.

Disorder in Society

Eden, the garden of God, is now turned into a sweatshop (Genesis 2;15; 3:17-19). The short hours, the easy work, the satisfying compensation, the joyous labor have gone into reverse. The ground is cursed and will not give forth its harvest except by long house and hard work, and at the cost of sorrow and sweat in battling with thorns, and thistles. Adam paid for his sin with "the sweat of his face."

Would he acknowledge this and bow before God's righteous judgment and accept the changed conditions under which he would henceforth have to earn his living? Or would he rebel and revolt? Would it lead him to demand of his Divine Employer the right of collective bargaining, by which he would ask for shorter hours, easier work, less sorrow and sweat for more food and fruit? Would Adam go on strike in resistance to the very conditions for which is sin was responsible?

Dear friends, stop right here a moment and think. Do the terrifying disorders of this very day between capital and labor, which have sent the world of workers on a strike, date back to Genesis 3? Is the seed plot of the admittedly unsolvable problems of international economics, world expansion, and trade that keep nations constantly on the verge of war to be found here? Can the diverse theories of government, which so set nations against each other that only the threat of the atom bomb keeps them from each other's throats, be traced back to the sin of God's first man in Eden? In fact, does not all the destructive disorder which has shaken every part of the world (and filled it with fear) have its beginning in that one sin whereby the federal head of the human race stepped out of the circle of God's will, through self-will? Did not Adam's sin put human society into reverse by placing it under the dominion and government of satan? Is the collective disorder, devastation, and destruction which has engulfed humanity and the earth due to one man's one disobedience to the will of God, revealed in the Word of God? All Scripture give ample ground to believe just this. Then what a clue it gives to the statesmen and leaders in the political, economic, social, and industrial life of nations to the only possible solution of the problems of this day!

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 28 - (Victory Through the Victor)